Along Came A Spider
by VagueJester
Summary: Peter was exhausted. Having lost all he holds dear and surmounting the most grueling challenge he had ever faced, he was ready to finally join his uncle. Instead he wakes up in an unfamiliar city, bonded with a symbiote who doesn't seem to want anything other than a friend just as a meteor and a strange otherworldly girl crash to Earth - and is that guy dressed like a bat!
1. Chapter 1

Peter whimpered as an explosion of pain wracked through his body and propelled him into consciousness. Clenching his eyes shut, he allowed a heartbroken sob to escape his throat as he remembered that it was finally over. For six months he had been caught in a never-ending war with Norman Osborn, who had not only donned the mantle of Green Goblin once more, but had managed to get his hands on what had to have been the strongest symbiote Peter had ever encountered since the original alien slime had bonded with Eddie Brock to become Venom. In a horrific opening salvo, Osborn had used Peter's nineteenth birthday as a means to wipe out all those Peter loved in one fell swoop. Aunt May, MJ, even Harry… all of them, gone in an instant. After that, he had released information to the press pertaining to Peter's secret identity as Spider-Man, and staged the largest breakout in history before demolishing both Rykers and the Raft, robbing Peter and the police of a safe place to put all the escaped inmates.

His coup de grace, however, was to reveal that he had some sort of experimental bomb in his position that could easily wipe the entire _state_ of New York off the map, and that he would use it if any superheroes other than Peter Parker was seen doing anything to help. For five long months, New York city had become a den of chaos and fear as the police were easily overpowered and Peter struggled frantically to defeat the captured baddies. It wasn't until his confrontation with Doc Ock, where he had to finally resort to using lethal measures, that he started to see any sort of significant headway, but that had been just as Norman had planned as well. He wanted people to fear Peter, to see him as a blood-thirsty monster, and as Peter's morals crumbled beneath the weight of his responsibilities, and he was forced to stain himself with more and more blood just to survive, he could tell that it was working. All of this came to a tipping point when, after Peter had disposed of the Scorpion, and the last of his super-powered enemies had been slain, Norman had issued the ultimatum that he would kill one person, at random, every day, until Peter had been killed.

Thirty days, and thirty bodies, Peter had finally cornered the Goblin atop the Oscorp Tower, where the bomb - which Peter had learned used gravity waves fueled by something called a Tesseract to literally destroy space-time within its blast-zone - had been set to detonate. Exhausted and wounded from a month of being hunted by every person in his beloved city, Osborn had toyed with him, every single bone in all four of Peter's limbs before dangling him over the edge of the building by his neck.

He was finally saved, however, by the one thing that had made Osborn nearly untouchable in a physical confrontation: the symbiote. Just as Peter was feeling the last of his life ebbing away, he felt a foreign presence in his mind, similar to original Venom symbiote he had bonded with three years ago. However, unlike Venom, who was nothing but unbridled aggression and rage, what he was currently feeling seemed shockingly similar to fear and, more surprisingly, remorse. Through a series of lightning fast images, Peter had been shown memories of Norman forcefully capturing and breeding symbiotes in order to create the most powerful one he could and bonding himself to it. While normally symbiotes had no problem with this as they would wear away at a host's will-power and slowly influence them, this particular one had not only been bred to reduce its ability to do this by removing the more aggressive traits within whatever it had for a mind, but also been subjected to the demented mind of the Green Goblin, something not easily bested in a battle of wills.

Feeling sorrow for the creature, Peter shared his own pain, and tried to project comfort for his last minutes of life. This seemed to affect the symbiote more than he anticipated, as before he knew it, Norman's strength was waning, and he watched in shock as the symbiote drew more and more from Osborn, sapping his life and leaving him as little more than a husk before slithering over Peter and bonding itself to him. While initially wary, Peter had accepted the creature when he felt its loneliness and figured he could use his last moments to give it company as he used his newfound strength to tear into the bomb. The last thing he remembered was punching into the bomb's power source and a bright flash of light before merciful darkness and soft voice whispering to him.

 _You have suffered much, champion, in the name of this world. You desire rest, understandably so, however you are still needed. A world of strangers, devoid of both friend and foe alike awaits, should you so choose._

Feeling a warm tingling in the back of his mind, Peter sat up and looked down at himself with surprise. His usual red and blue suit had been replaced by a slick, black one that covered him from head to toe.

"I guess I have you to thank for the fact that I'm still breathing," he muttered as he pushed himself to his feet. Warmth filled him as the symbiote gave off a feeling of relief. Taking a deep breath, Peter allowed his grief to wash over him once more as tears continued to pour down his cheeks. It was finally over, and while he had been perfectly content allowing himself to die on the rooftop before, he now felt like his sadness and exhaustion - which had felt overwhelming - were being pushed away and compartmentalized. It still felt like a part of him was grieving, but it felt separate, like a second Peter was sitting in a therapist's office while he stood on that rooftop. Looking down at his new wearable companion he raised an eyebrow.

"You're doing this, aren't you?" He asked rhetorically. To his surprise he received an affirmative from the symbiote along with what felt like a genuine desire to help him. "Well, thanks, I guess. As long as you're not forcing me to bottle it up or anything."

This time he received the mental equivalent of a shake of a head. He could still feel the unyielding pain tearing at his soul, but whatever the symbiote was doing with his mind seemed to be allowing him to deal with it while maintaining his rationality. Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, Peter shrugged and took a look around. Nothing about the city surrounding him looked familiar; large gothic buildings scraped the sky and the streets below made it look like the rough part of town was every part.

Turning in place, he caught sight of a billboard depicting a man in a suit smiling charmingly at him with the words: _Gotham's White Knight: Vote Harvey Dent for Gotham City's District Attorney._

"Gotham?" Peter read curiously. He had never heard of a place called Gotham, and as he continued to survey his surroundings, a deep sense of dread started to fill his gut. "Please let me be wrong," he muttered to himself as his mind tried to balance out Murphy's Law and Occam's Razor. His musings were interrupted, however, by a bright flash of light and an explosion not far from where he was standing. Sprinting to the edge of the roof, he looked out and saw that something had slammed into the ground near what looked like a harbor. Diving off the rooftop, Peter immediately began swinging towards the crash site, mentally thanking the symbiote for replacing his damaged web shooters. In a matter of minutes, Peter made it to the pier and perched himself on a nearby warehouse to survey the scene. It looked like some sort of meteor had crashed into the harbor, destroying the surrounding docks and vaporizing a massive amount of water. Something from the meteor must have mixed with the water vapour as the entire area was blanketed in a thick green fog.

"Help!"

Straining his ears, Peter listened as someone called out against the rushing water, and dove through the fog to land on a post sticking out of the water before locating the source of the voice and firing a web into the water and giving it a yank. He caught the would be drowning victim with ease, and leapt out of the fog towards dry land, where he placed his passenger on the ground gently, allowing him to get a good look at them.

Lying on the ground before him was a girl about his age with golden blonde hair and unnaturally blue eyes. She was dressed in a strange form-fitting suit with a large _S_ inside of a diamond emblazoned on her chest.

"Are you okay?" He asked.

Rather than answer, the girl shot to her feet and started shouting. "Kal! Kal, are you out there?!"

"Is Kal someone who was with you?" Peter asked, approaching the girl slowly.

As if noticing him for the first time, the girl whirled around on Peter and stared at him wide-eyed. "Who are you?!" She demanded, her fists clenched.

"It's okay," he said soothingly. Making a snap decision, he willed his mask away to reveal his face. If he was right about where he thought he was, then odds were that nobody would know who he was. If not, then his name was already one of the most well known in the world, and it wasn't like he had much left to put at risk anyway. "My name is Peter. I want to help. Who's Kal?"

"Kal-El," the girl explained. "He's my cousin. We were supposed to come here together, but something happened and my pod was knocked off course."

 _Hang on, pod?_ Peter asked himself, forcing himself to take a deep breath. It's not like he hadn't dealt with aliens before - hell, he was wearing one, for God's sakes! "Does that mean you're not from this planet?" He asked carefully.

The girl shook her head. "I am Kara Zor-El, Last Daughter of the House of El, from the planet Krypton." Once she was finished, Kara immediately began swaying on the spot, and Peter rushed over to catch her before she could fall to the ground. He noticed how her breathing was becoming more and more ragged and deduced that whatever species Kara was, despite looking human, was not reacting well to the gas that was still curling through the air. Picking her up and holding her against him, Peter willed his mask to reform and fired a web and pulled himself to a nearby building, setting them both down on the rooftop. He rubbed her back as she coughed and hacked and waited patiently for her to finish.

"Kara," he said carefully, "how old are you and Kal?"

"I am nearly nine by kryptonian standards," Kara explained. "However Kal was just a newborn when we fled the death of our planet."

"Your planet died?" Peter repeated, aghast. Kara nodded and he could see her fighting back tears.

"I was supposed to protect Kal, but now I have no idea where he is, or how long he has been on this planet for, or if he even made it at all. What should I do?"

"Look," Peter said. "I know you feel alone, and that's okay, but you should know that you're not. If I can, I'll see if I can help you find Kal, okay?"

"You will?" Kara asked.

"Absolutely. First, though, we need to get you out of here before someone comes to investigate."

As if summoned by his words, Peter felt the familiar tingle at the back of his neck and flipped into the air, dodging a pair of sharp looking objects that spun through the air. Kara didn't react and he turned to warn her, only to see the blades bounce harmlessly off her.

 _I guess she's tougher than us squishy humans,_ Peter thought as his spider-sense went off once more and he leaned back to dodge more projectiles before using his webbing to grab them and throw them back where they came from. Two sharp _clangs_ announced that the blades had been blocked and Peter had to dodge as a black form came barreling out of the shadows to attack him. Evading his attacker with ease, Peter caught a stray punch and used it to launch them over his shoulder only for them to flip in midair and land on their feet, giving him his first good look at his opponent.

Standing before him was a rather large man in a dark grey combat suit made from material not dissimilar to the one Captain America wore. On his chest was an insignia in the shape of a bat, and he had a dark cape and cowl that made him look like a human incarnation of his insignia. The man glared at Peter, sizing him up, and Peter did the same, though not quite as silently.

"So, who are you supposed to be," he asked. "Batman?"

"Yes," the man deadpanned before rushing at Peter with speed and skill the likes of which he had only seen from people such as Taskmaster and the Captain.

This time, Peter was ready, however, and between his own superhuman abilities and the enhancements granted to him by his newest symbiotic friend, he had no trouble keeping up with the man. He was surprised, however, when he had to jump back to avoid a kick to the temple and a golden blur zoomed under him and slammed into Batman, sending him rocketing into the wall of a taller building across the alley from him.

"Leave him alone!" Kara yelled, glaring at Batman as she stood next to Peter, turning to him. "Are you okay -"

"Spider-Man," Peter cut her off. "I don't normally let guys dressed as bats who are trying to beat me up learn my real name."

Kara nodded and they turned back to where Batman had been, only to find him missing. Peter's spider-sense went off at that moment and he pushed Kara to the side as Batman came plummeting towards them, an eerie green glow shining through the knuckles of his gloves. Rolling out of the way, Peter launched himself at Batman and pinned his arm to the ground with webs as he kicked him in the jaw, forcing him onto his back where his other arm was pinned, followed by the rest of his body.

"Cool costume," he said as he crouched over the man's head. "What's up with the glow-sticks in your gloves?"

"Could ask you the same thing," Batman growled, and Peter raised an unseen eyebrow before looking down at his own suit and noticing that the usual white spider motif and trimmings were glowing a similar shade of green, though his somehow looked much less sickly.

 _Is this your doing?_ Peter thought to the symbiote bonded to him. In response, the symbiote sent him flashes of the green smoke circling around where he had found Kara. _So you bonded with it?_ He asked receiving a mental nod.

"You know, you're not the first bad guy to try to get answers out of me after I've beaten him," Peter remarked, poking Batman on the forehead. "But you are the most confidant. Unfortunately for you, I've been at this long enough to go with my gut when something like that happens." Reaching down, Peter detached the heavy duty belt around the man's waist, and casually tossed it to Kara, who was standing as far away from them as she could. "Can you do me a favour and toss that into the water?"

Kara nodded, and gently threw the belt as hard as she could, sending it flying well over the water where she had crashed and far away into the horizon. Peter gaped at her extraordinary strength as she spun in place and smiled sheepishly. "Sorry," she mumbled. "My… My parents told me I would be stronger on this planet than on Krypton, but I didn't think it would be that much.

"That's alright," Peter said, trying to distract her before she got lost in what looked like some painful memories. "Let's focus back on finding out why rodent-head here attacked us out of nowhere." Reaching down, he grabbed the bottom of Batman's cowl and watched as a bolt of electricity lit up in the night. "Clever, but I learned to insulate my suit a long time ago." With a flourish, Peter ripped off Batman's mask, mentally apologizing to the symbiote as it let out a slight hiss of pain from the electricity, and was met with the glaring face of a man in his early thirties with short, black hair and cold, brown eyes. "So, why not start with who you are and why you're after me and my new friend here."

The man's face remained impassive as ever as he looked Peter up and down in a manner frighteningly similar to how he remembered Doc Ock would analyze him for potential weaknesses. Sighing, Peter leaned back and scratched the back of his head.

"Look, buddy, I'm gonna be handing you over to the police regardless, so why not make both our lives easier and answer my questions?"

"You're not the only one who has experience with interrogation," Batman said darkly. "So why not spare me the boredom and move right on to the torture."

Peter's eyes widened as images began flashing through his mind faster than he could process - memories from the last six months and the things he had been forced to do - before the symbiote stepped in and suppressed the episode so that he could focus on the task at hand. Lowering his head sadly, Peter took a deep, calming breath, before replying.

"Look, man, I know the news coming out of New York about me probably hasn't been the most flattering -"

"What news out of New York?" Batman asked, making the dread Peter had felt earlier return with a vengeance.

"I-In the last six months," Peter asked haltingly, drawing on the comfort the symbiote was sending him like a river in a desert. "Has New York City been under any sort of state of emergency?"

"No."

"Huh." Leaning back, Peter forced himself to work through the panic before it overwhelmed him. Somehow, the bomb had blasted him all the way to another Earth entirely, leaving him stranded in a reality that was so vastly different, there were metropolitan cities he had never heard of within what he guessed was the northern United States. He was alone, completely and utterly.

 _Really, though, how is that any different than before?_ He thought to himself bitterly, before a stab of irritation from the symbiote reminded him of its presence. _You're right. At least we have each other._

"Sp-Spider-Man?" Peter looked up and saw Kara approaching him cautiously, her face pale as she looked between him and Batman. "Are you alright?"

"Not really," Peter sighed, standing up. "Look, why don't we get out of here, and find some place to regroup before we start looking for your cousin? Tall, dark, and grouchy over there is starting to get on my nerves."

Kara nodded shyly, and Peter walked over to her, waiting patiently for her to nod her consent before wrapping an arm around her waist and firing a web at a nearby building and swinging off into this brand new world.

 _Devoid of friends and foes alike? I guess if anyone could use a second chance, it's me._

 **A/N: So, I know that the whole Spidey is launched to the DCU thing has been done before, as well as harems being a cliche that's rarely, if ever, well done, but, to be frank, I didn't start writing this to make an original masterpiece. I just had the idea while reading Justice League: Spider, and decided to indulge myself. Also, the whole symbiote thing is so that Peter can stand up to some of the overpowered individuals in the DCU when they inevitably butt head as well as keeping him from being a mess of angst right off the bat. That being said, he understandably won't be unaffected by the trauma of his past. I just don't want him to become a wall-crawling version of Batman.**


	2. Chapter 2

"So, we're both new to this world?" Kara asked as she and Peter swung above the streets of Gotham.

"It looks like it," Peter replied, unable to keep all of the wistfulness out of his voice. Thankfully, the symbiote, who had sifted through his memories and seeing the likes of Venom and Carnage decided that it wanted a name as well, sent him a wave of comfort and he thanked it, opening up his mind to allow it to try and find a suitable name after he had felt the wave of unbridled disgust and anger from the alien creature when it saw his memories of the destruction its predecessors had caused.

"Do you want to go back?"

"There's nothing left for me there," Peter replied, grateful that Kara decided not to push him. He was about to change the subject when his spider-sense went crazy, forcing him to tighten his grip on Kara significantly as he launched himself into the air, twisting and flipping out of the way of a blue and red blur that attempted to smear him against the side of one of the nearby skyscrapers. "What now?" He asked irritably as he landed on a nearby gargoyle and gently deposited Kara on the rooftop before turning to face this newest threat.

Floating above him was a giant of a man. Despite his slender physique, Peter knew he was no slouch in the height department, standing at a more than reasonable six-feet three-inches, however that still left him with what he figured was an inch or three deficit between himself and the other man, which was exaggerated both by Peter's crouched position and the man floating a good six inches above the gargoyle. He had neatly-combed, black hair, a square jaw, and cheekbones that could cut diamond. Combined with his bright blue eyes, he looked like someone had asked a hundred white, suburban mothers what their ideal man looked like and generated him in a computer based on their answers. His entire body overflowed with muscle and he crossed his arms across his chest subtly showing off biceps the size of Peter's head as he stared down at him with a look that reminded him of how Captain America looked at him the first time they met - like he was nothing more than a child (which, to be fair, he had been).

"I'm going to have to ask you to let the girl go, son," the man rumbled, his voice a deep baritone. Peter took his time to look the floating man up and down, taking note of the bright blue suit covering him, accented by a flowing, vermilion cape and matching belt and boots.

"Look, buddy, I dunno who you are," Peter said, matching the man's stare with his own as the green lenses of his suit narrowed. "But if you call me son again, I'll do more than just web you up like I did your bat-brained pal back there."

The man uncrossed his arms and Peter immediately noticed the massive emblem on his chest that was identical to the one Kara wore. He heard her gasp behind him and watched as she rushed across the gargoyle to start speaking to the man in a strange musical language. The man looked shocked and tried to reply in kind, but his use of the language was halting and unnatural, like a piano sonata played in the wrong key. Kara's face went through a myriad of emotions as she looked up at the man before whispering, "Kal."

"Hello... cousin," the floating man said hesitatingly.

"Wait," Peter said, holding his hands up as he tried to understand what was going on. "Didn't you say that Kal-El was a baby, not a floating bodybuilder in a cape?"

"I arrived on this planet alone as an infant and was found by my adoptive parents," the recently revealed Kal explained as he floated down to stand on the rooftop with them.

"Meanwhile, I remained in stasis while my pod was knocked off course," Kara finished. Tears welled up in her eyes and her lips started to quiver "Oh, Kal, I'm so sorry!" She launched herself at her cousin and Peter watched as the man froze for a moment before awkwardly returning the hug. Narrowing his eyes, Peter stepped closer and crossed his own arms.

"Let's say I believe you are the baby we're looking for," he said. "How would you know where Kara was and how to find her?"

"My senses are far-and-above those of humans," Kal replied. "I heard the meteor enter the atmosphere. Unfortunately, I would've had to wait for the vaporized kryptonite to settle before I could even begin to look had I not found a friend of mine trapped in some sort of adhesive on a nearby rooftop."

"That guy was a friend of yours?" Peter asked, filing away what the man had said about the strange green vapour to look up later when he had secured himself a source of information. He had deduced that it and the glowing substance in Batman's gloves were one and the same, and that it seemed to affect Kara negatively just by being around it; he did wonder why he didn't seem to affect her, as his new, gooey friend had absorbed a decent amount, but chalked it up to something to do with the symbiote until he could investigate it properly. "He attacked us for no reason!"

"He's more of a... working acquaintance," the man replied.

"Oh, that's good," Peter said sarcastically. "Good to know you only _work_ with the guy who tried to kill me and the girl whose cousin you claim to be."

"I don't kill," a voice said as Batman appeared from above them, out of nowhere. "I was merely taking precautions."

"You were merely being _preemptive,_ " Peter corrected. "You thought it was better to take us down beforehand rather than assess whether or not we were actual threats." Batman said nothing and Peter turned from him, ignoring him as he addressed Kara. "Kara, do you honestly, deep down believe this man is your cousin?"

Kara remained silent for several moments as she looked the man up and down before turning and nodding to Peter. "His Kryptonian is atrocious, but it is there, and he bears the mark of the House of El. I think, for the time being at least, we can trust him."

Sighing, Peter turned to the man and held out his hand. "Spider-Man."

The man reached out and returned the gesture, eyes widening when Peter used some of his enhanced strength to tighten his grip. "Superman."

"Well, that's a little vague," Peter joked.

*(OoO)*

Apparently, where his world had SHIELD and the Avengers, this world had an independent group of heroes dubbed the Justice League. Superman and Batman hadn't said a word before grabbing Kara and Peter respectively and activating some device, causing some strange tunnel of light to appear in front of them, through which they walked. On the other side of the portal was a sophisticated room filled with enough interesting technology to hold Peter's interest for years were it not for the large window on the other side of the room that looked down on the planet Earth in all its splendor. Stunned, he walked over to the window and placed his hand on the glass as he looked down at the planet that, from this distance, looked identical to his own. He lost track of time as he stared at the shining, blue sphere until he Kara came over and placed a comforting hand on his shoulder as she too looked out the window.

"It looks so different from Krypton," she whispered solemnly.

Peter was about to reply when his spider-sense went absolutely crazy moments before he and Kara were facing down a room full of automated guns in front of Superman, who looked upset while Batman was joined by a woman in what looked like Greek armor as well as a tall, green-skinned, masculine humanoid with glowing red eyes.

"What's going on?!" Kara shouted, while Peter narrowed his eyes at them in silent anger.

"Kara, I'm sorry," Kal said. "Batman just wants to be sure you are who you say you are."

"I don't know how things work in this universe," Peter growled. "But you really need to work on your people skills buddy."

"Diana, would you please?" Kal said tiredly. The armored woman nodded and walked forward, unhooking a length of rope from her waist as she approached.

"This lasso compels all who touch it to speak the truth," she said firmly, wrapping it around the both of them with surprising strength while the many turrets receded back into what looked like any available surface. "Who are you?"

"My name is Kara Zor-El," Kara blurted out. "Daughter of Zor-El and Alura. My parents along with my uncle and aunt put myself and my cousin Kal-El into pods in order to escape the death of our Krypton, our home. Kal left before me, and I was knocked off course by the explosion."

Peter watched as the so-called Justice League interrogated Kara, forcing her to reveal everything about herself to them. His symbiote friend hissed in pain the entire time it was in contact with the strange rope, and Peter willed it to carefully recede around the rope, allowing it to rub against his bare only consolation was that Kal, at least, seemed to grow more and more displeased with what they were doing as it went on.

"That _has_ to be enough," he said sternly as he whirled on Batman angrily.

"Fine," Batman said, though he still didn't sound convinced. "Diana, move on to the other one."

The woman, Diana, nodded and turned to face Peter, her expression stony. "Who are you?" She asked.

Peter felt the compulsion to answer her question and grit his teeth as he fought against it. "Spider-Man," he grunted after what felt like ages.

"What is your name?"

"Spider-Man."

"What is your birth name?" Diana asked, frustration growing.

Peter grunted as he felt the foreign pressure in his mind increase. It felt like someone was screaming in his mind, scrambling his thoughts and preventing him from thinking of a response.

"It is the name my parents gave me when I was born," Peter hissed, grunting as Diana tightened the lasso around both him and Kara.

"Tell me your name!" She demanded.

"Peter!" Kara yelled, tears streaming down her face as she was compelled to answer. "His name is Peter! He found me after I crashed and rescued me from drowning. He's from another universe similar to our own! Please! That's all I know!"

"Let her go!" Peter shouted struggling against the bond. "You've got your answers from her! This is just cruel!"

"Diana!" Kal shouted appearing next to the woman in a blur and placing a hand on her shoulder. Diana for her part, at least looked sorry for what she had unwittingly done to Kara and hurried to release her from her bonds.

"I am sorry," Diana murmured. "I had no idea that would happen. I've never seen someone resist my lasso's power like that before."

Peter ignored her as he turned over to Kara and placed his hands on either side of her head, forcing her to look him in the eye as he willed his mask to recede. It wasn't like there was anyone left to be put at risk from his face being seen, and if there were, they were a universe away so the point was moot.

"It's okay, Kara. You're okay."

"Kara," Kal said as he took a step towards them. "I am _so_ sorry." He tried to take another step towards them when Peter whirled around and glared at him and the others. All of them looked shocked to find out that he was so young, but he set that aside for the moment and took a threatening step forwards towards the man.

"Take another step," he growled, feeling his suit react to his emotions as his mask reappeared over his face and two long, glowing, green rapier-like blades began to extend from his wrists, opposite where his webs were shot from. "And I will personally make sure you regret it."

"There is no need for such hostilities," the green-skinned man said, taking a cautious step forward. "We simply wish to ensure that we have not unwittingly allowed an enemy within our headquarters."

Peter felt a nudge from the symbiote as he stared up at Kal, not backing down in the slightest. Allowing one of the only two creatures in this universe that he actually trusted to do what it needed to, he addressed the group at large as the green man gasped and fell to his knees. Turning away from Kal, whom he felt was genuinely sorry for the way they had been treated, Peter marched over to Batman and stared him in the eye.

"What did you do to him?" Batman growled as the green man - whom Peter learned was a martian and had been trying to access his mind, only to be rebuked by defenses created by the symbiote - groaned on the ground. Ignoring Batman completely, Peter nudged him out of the way with his shoulder and crouched down to help the martian to his feet.

"I'm sorry about that," he said. "My friend sensed your intrusion and I allowed it to deal with you how it saw fit."

"I should be the one apologizing," the martian said hoarsely. "It was wrong of me to do that, and I do not relish doing it - particularly not to one who has such a Pyrrhic mental defense as yours. My name is J'onn J'onzz." J'onn extended his hand and Peter shook it before he turned to his teammates. "From what I've seen, this young man is more than worthy of our trust. Even if we are not of his."

*(OoO)*

Later that evening, both Peter and Kara had retired to one of the guest rooms. The League had offered them separate rooms, but Peter had refused, stating he would sleep on the couch in Kara's, which after what she had seen of how they treated them both, she was more than happy for.

Meanwhile, the remaining available members of the Justice League - Flash and Green Lantern - had returned and were being briefed on their new guests. Aquaman, being a monarch, rarely came to the Watchtower unless absolutely necessary.

"So, rather than simply - I dunno - asking them who they were or where they came from," Hal Jordan surmised derisively. "You thought it best to immediately resort to the Lasso and telepathy?"

"This team was founded because of an attack from beings from another world," Batman replied. "I'm not about to take any of those kinds of risks when more suddenly appear in my city."

"Regardless, we have committed a rather egregious offense," J'onn said. "The two of them did nothing to warrant such extreme measures, and we must remember to be more disciplined in the future."

"That being said," Clark said, resting his clenched fiist on the table in front of him. "I have never seen someone resist both Diana and J'onn so completely."

"I have no answer for how the boy managed to overcome the compulsions from the Lasso of Truth," J'onn replied. "However, I was rebuffed because the boy's suit is also a living being and is bonded with him. With his permission it mounted a defense the likes of which I had never seen."

"What do you mean?" Barry Allen asked.

"Unlike Clark and Kara, whose physiology provides a natural protection, Peter is, for the most part, human," J'onn explained. "The creature he is bonded with, however, is anything but. It knew that it could not stop me from entering his mind, so instead it forced me to see only what it wanted me to see."

"And what was that?" Diana asked.

J'onn was silent for a moment as he looked down at the table. "Pain," he said lowly, avoiding their eyes. "Unimaginable, unending pain. It searched through Peter's memories and used the pain and sorrow coursing through them to overwhelm me. I did not see the memories, but time and time again I was assaulted with the boy's feelings of loss as those he loved were taken from him. There was also guilt as something forced him to shed his morals." He paused as he gathered his himself and cleared his throat. "For one as young as him to don the mantle of hero and shoulder responsibility equal to and sometimes greater than our own to have been forced to stain his hands. He sees himself as little more than a monster."

*(OoO)*

Peter woke from dreams of red hair and crimson blood to a pounding on the door to the room where he and Kara were sleeping. She too had been plagued by nightmares until he had moved from the couch to her bed, simply holding her as she sobbed loudly into his chest. The pounding continued and both of them were on their feet in an instant, Kara on the floor and Peter on the ceiling as she cautiously approached the door.

"Yes?" She called out.

"Kara?" Kal called through the door. "It's me, Clark. Could you and Peter please come out? We've come to a decision."

Kara looked fearful as Peter hopped down to the ground, the symbiote changing back into his normal suit from the pyjamas he had slept in, and placed a hand on her shoulder.

"No matter what," he assured her. "I'll stay with you."

Kara smiled feebly and nodded before pushing the button to open the door, unintentionally breaking the keypad with her enhanced strength. The door opened to reveal a frowning Superman who led them to a large room with a horseshoe-shaped table where the members of the Justice League were seated with the addition of a tall, slender man in a bright red suit with a matching mask covering his head and a yellow lightning bolt on his chest as well as a muscular African-American man in a black and green suit with a glowing green ring adorning his right hand.

"Peter, Kara, meet the Flash and the Green Lantern," Clark said as he took a seat next to Diana before continuing. "Kara, let me preface this by saying that nothing makes me happier than to know that I have family. As I'm sure you've noticed, the powers you've developed since coming to Earth have been difficult to control. That's why we've decided that Diana will be taking you to her home, Themyscira, to help you learn to control your powers."

"Where is this place?" Peter asked.

"It is of no concern to you," Diana answered cooly. "Men are not permitted on the island of paradise."

"Paradise sounds real enlightened," Peter shot back sarcastically.

"You mean Peter won't be able to come with us?" Kara asked nervously.

"That's right," Green Lantern said.

Taking a deep breath, Kara steeled herself as she surreptitiously reached behind her for Peter's hand. "Then I decline."

"Kara," Clarke implored, "this is for the best. Trust me when I say that you're likely to hurt yourself or someone else if you don't learn to control your powers."

"Then you teach me!" Kara exclaimed.

Clark sighed and shook his head. "I can't. I have another identity and wouldn't be able to afford to house you, let alone spare the time to help you practice safely."

"Then Peter can teach me," Kara countered. "He's stronger than me, and has even beaten the mean one in single combat."

"Hold on," Flash interrupted. "He beat you?!"

"It won't be happening again," Batman growled.

"I'd be happy to let you try again, sourpuss," Peter snarked, crossing his arms. "I've been in this game for a while. I'm more than qualified to teach Kara if she wants."

"And where would you stay while you did that?" Diana asked. "I am offering the girl the best training as well as a place she can call home."

"Nowhere on this planet is my home!" Kara shouted. "My home is gone! Peter is the only one who has cared about what I want since I landed, and I am _not_ leaving him under any circumstances."

Peter watched as the Justice League tensed and prepared himself as his spider-sense went off once more and he tackled Kara to the ground as a flash of lightning lit up the room and a pale blue smoke began to curl into the form of a woman. The Justice League leapt to their feet, only for Diana to gasp and sink to her knees.

"Lady Hera!"

The ghostly woman ignored them all as she looked down at Diana and smiled before speaking in a booming, ethereal voice. "The man from unreachable shores has my leave to pass the shores of the domain unreachable to man." Without another word, the smoke dissipated in a flash of lightning and Peter turned away from the stunned Justice League to smile down at Kara.

"I guess we're headed to Paradise together."

 **A/N: And there's chapter two. Next chapter we'll meet the other amazons, including Donna. I wanted to make it so that Peter doesn't immediately agree to join the League or anything. He's just been through Hell, and the only thing he has is a commitment to helping Kara at the moment. As for the League's actions, this is fairly early in their respective hero careers, with the League having been formed for about six months, so they're not only still trying to figure out where the lines they can't cross are, but the paranoia from the last alien invasion has yet to really go away as well.**


	3. Chapter 3

Peter sighed as the plane-spaceship-thing landed and he stood up. In the three weeks since the appearance of a literal goddess from ancient mythology had appeared in the middle of an argument between him and this Earth's mightiest heroes, he had taken the time to gather as much information on this new world as possible. Luckily, Google still existed in this universe, and it didn't take much work to give himself access to one of the Watchtower's computers, much to the consternation of Batman - who he quickly learned was named Bruce Wayne, one of the wealthiest men in this world, and essentially a darker, broodier, less alcoholic version of Tony Stark with paranoia rivaling that of SHIELD at its worst. Peter constantly held the fact that he knew more about Bruce than the other man did him over the man's head, as well as the fact that his spider-sense and his symbiotic friend (who had chosen the name Greg of all things) kept him aware of where Bruce was in relation to him at all times within a ten meter radius.

That alone was reason enough for Peter not to trust the guy. Not even Norman Osborn at his worst had caused his sixth sense to tingle unceasingly, which meant that, while Batman may be dedicated to fighting on the side of good, he would capitalize on every opening Peter gave him to ensure that he constantly had an advantage over him. This led Peter to take to sneaking around the Watchtower through its ventilation shafts and webbing up any camera he walked by, since Greg made sure to dissolve it before the Bat-Brain could get a hold of it.

Meanwhile, Peter and Kara would spend most of their time together in the League's training room, working on helping her master her powers under the watchful eye of Diana while the rest of the Justice League attended to their regular duties. Peter could tell that he and the Amazonian princess did not see eye to eye, but he respected her nonetheless, and after reading up on what was known of the Amazons of Themyscira and their history of seclusion, he made sure to be nothing but respectful in matters pertaining to both combat training and her people. He may crack wise and tease pretty much everyone he met, but he could tell that Diana was a woman who was genuinely trying to help people, and that her sisters' past with men had left many scars that lingered to this day. The only members of the Justice League Peter truly got along with were the Flash, who seemed like a generally nice guy and was fun to kick back and hang around with, and J'onn who shared the story of his people with Peter and told him if he ever wanted to talk that he would be there for him.

Kal, who after a little bit of digging Peter had unearthed went by Clark Kent among the common folk by hiding in plain sight, spent the least amount of time with him and Kara after the Green Lantern who had been called away less than a day after the appearance of Hera. Peter found it strange that someone who apparently lamented the loss of his home planet so much would work so hard to avoid his last living link to it, and would constantly find Kara moping after yet another failed attempt to maintain a conversation with him. In their freetime, Peter helped Kara learn about Earth cultures which Diana supplemented with lessons on the culture of Themyscira, and, in return, Kara taught him some basic Kryptonian. They had learned that both came from families of scientist, and bonded over the different technology around the Watchtower.

The doors of the aircraft opened, rousing Peter from his reminiscing as he stepped outside only to be met with about fifty spears all pointed at various points between his throat and his groin. Restraining a sigh at the Amazons' understandably frigid welcome, he had Greg change from his normal suit to a pair of loose pants and a long-sleeved shirt as he raised his hands away from his body, not quite in surrender, but enough to show that he was not a threat.

"You know, whenever I pictured paradise in my head, it always did involve an inordinate amount of pointy things directed at me," he groused, smirking when he heard Kara giggle behind him as she and Diana disembarked behind him.

"And I was just starting to really enjoy the silence," Diana groaned to herself as she passed him and approached a woman who looked nearly identical to her with the exception of a handful more years around her eyes before kneeling on the ground. "Mother, words cannot express my joy at seeing you again."

"You took the words from my breath, daughter," the woman said regally as she reached down to help Diana to her feet. "And I see you have brought with you a new sister to join our ranks," she smiled at Kara, who waved shyly, before directing her gaze at Peter and he could almost feel the millenia-old, misplaced hatred she was directing at him. "Among other things."

"To be honest, I'm flattered," Peter mock whispered to Kara, knowing full well every Amazon in attendance could hear him. "That's probably the nicest thing I'm going to be called while here."

"Peter," Kara giggled. "Be polite."

Peter sighed dramatically. "Fine." He turned to Diana and her mother and bent down in a sweeping bow, using his exceptional flexibility to nearly brush the tips of his hair against the sand at his feet. "Oh great Queen of the Mighty Amazons, it humbles this wicked man's soul to be granted passage to the shining beaches of the paradies you call home. When stories of your strength and prowess on the battlefield reached mine ears, I risked life and limb to cross the seas between our worlds and braved the terrors of your daughter and her compatriots to be blessed with the opportunity to stand behind a ruler as just and noble as yourself."

The queen glared at Peter coolly, but he found himself entirely unfazed. This woman had nothing on the likes of Aunt May when it came to glaring and he matched her gaze with his own, channeling every bit of Tony Stark as he could while he tested the limits of the people he would be living with until Kara was properly trained.

"You are certainly more… verbose than I expected," the queen said after several long moments. She took a menacing step towards him and all of the surrounding Amazons tensed as they likely prepared for the order to turn him into a human pincushion. "However, I have little tolerance for disrespect, especially that which is hid beneath a flimsy veil of decorum in what can only be described as wit the way a damp pillow could be a sword."

"Oh, darn, and all that time practicing in front of the mirror wasted too," Peter replied easily not backing down as the queen stepped ever closer. "Though I suppose a queen who doesn't even introduce herself to her guests can't be expected to really grasp the subtle nuances of polite conversation, let alone my unmatched sense of humor."

"You'll be skinned alive for disrespecting Queen Hippolyta you honourless cur!" A voice shouted before peter easily dodged a charging amazon, disarming and webbing her to side of the aircraft.

 _And there it is,_ he thought. He knew he had trouble keeping his mouth shut at the best of times, now he would have a baseline around which to keep his comments so as to avoid a mob baying for his blood.

"Respect is earned," Peter growled as he swatted aside Hippolyta's blade. "And not a single amazon I have met so far has done much to do so save maybe Diana."

"Peter, maybe you should stop trying to make the angry warrior women try to kill you before the end of our first day here?" Kara suggested quietly, placing a hand on Peter's shoulder. There was something dark in his eyes. Something that haunted him and compelled him to engage in this little verbal sparring match. Peter closed his eyes and took a deep breath, thanking Greg for helping to siphon off some of his aggression before nodding.

"I'm going to find a place to set myself up, alright?" He said as he turned to Kara. "I have a feeling everyone will sleep easier if I don't hang around the city too often, but I'll come see you tomorrow to help with your training."

"Okay," Kara replied demurely, tightly hugging Peter before watching him easily launch himself into the air and flip over the gathered amazons as he fired a web at a nearby tree and disappeared into the shadows of the forest.

"Come Kara," Diana said after several moments of tense silence. "I will show you to your new living quarters."

Kara nodded and cast one last glance towards the treeline before following Diana and the others into what was supposed to be her new home for the foreseeable future.

Peter took a deep calming breath as he swung through the dense jungles of paradise island, making sure to keep to the shadows as he trailed Kara and the procession of amazons. It wasn't so much that he didn't trust them, but he would be lying if he didn't admit that he had grown close to Kara over the past few weeks. Not only did she understand what he was going through, having lost everything and winding up on a different world, but her eternally sunny disposition helped keep him from falling too far into depression as he thought about his family and loved ones,

Shaking his head to clear away that train of thought he watched as Kara was led into a what he presumed was a palace before finding himself a nice tree not too far away and making a hammock out of webs as the sounds of some sort of celebration started to fill the air.

*(OoO)*

Donna grumbled to herself as she trudged through the familiar jungle behind the royal palace where she lived. She loved her older sister with a passion, and was always beyond happy to see her, but Diana was not only the crown princess to Themyscira, but Wonder Woman as well. Her exploits were legendary, and whenever she came to visit, it didn't take long for Donna to end up receding into a corner as everyone clambered to hear about what she had been up to until the wine started flowing and the inevitable comparisons between the two sisters were made.

At least Kara, the new girl Diana had brought with her to train with them, had seemed genuinely interested in her. The girl was like sunshine incarnate, especially considering what she had been through. Each smile she graced Donna with brought about a warmth beneath her breast that filled her slowly, while the mixture of wine and the girl's legs as she sat in her newly gifted toga sparked another noticeably lower. The two had talked for quite a while even as Donna's friends left in fits of drunken laughter to go hunting. Kara had been worried however as her sensitive hearing picked up scraps of their jovial conversation and thought they might be going after her friend who had come with her and would be helping with her training.

Donna was intrigued by the idea of a man living on Paradise Island with them. Even Diana, who had been the one to open up contact between the amazons and man's world, would never have proposed one _living_ with them. She had asked Kara all about the man, learning that his name was Peter and that he had apparently not only held his own with the legendary Batman, but had even resisted the power of her sister's Lasso of Truth. She had comforted Kara when she admitted guiltily that she was the reason the Justice League knew anything about Peter in the first place because they were both tied up together.

That had angered Donna. From what she had heard, Batman was the member of the Justice League with the most experience, operating for well over two years before the League even formed six months ago, and while she expected that kind of behaviour from him based on what she had heard about the caped crusader, she had never expected Diana or the others to stoop to such levels.

Donna's thoughts were interrupted when she heard a groan from above her and looked up to see Agatha, one of the warriors her age, hanging from a tree in a cocoon of some strange substance. A second groan drew her attention away from Agatha and she ventured a little farther to see another of her sisters hanging from a tree branch, and yet another not too far from there. In only minutes of walking she had found well over twenty of her sisters dangling above the forest floor, their weapons stuck to the ground and tree trunks by the same strange substance.

"Donna," Agatha groaned as she returned and shook the girl awake.

"Agatha, what happened?" Donna asked as she tugged at the strange fibers wrapped tightly around her. They were sticky and stretched when she pulled on them, but it took almost all of her strength to stretch them even minutely.

"We tried hunting him," Agatha moaned, shaking her head. "Too fast."

"In your defence," a voice said from the shadows above them and Donna jumped back, preparing herself for a fight. "You are _really_ drunk."

Out of the darkness a pair of large, glowing green eyes stared out at her and Donna reached for her sword only to remember she left it at the palace.

"The Mother Hera herself invites you to our home, and the first thing you do is attack us?" Donna demanded angrily.

"No," the man said as he peered down at her. "The first thing I do is mouth off to your queen. The first thing _you_ do is throw a party and decide to play a game of pin the spear on the Spider-Man."

"I guess Kara was worried for nothing," Donna said placing her hands on her hips.

"You met Kara?" Peter asked. "How is she doing?"

"Everyone has met her," Donna replied. "She will fit in nicely - assuming my sisters can overlook her attachment to you."

Peter scoffed. "Not likely. You're the only amazon I've met so far who seems genuinely pleasant."

"Well, I'm a bit of a black sheep," Donna admitted, looking away slightly.

Peter cocked his head to the side, noting how the girl before him looked shockingly similar to Diana, only around his age. Jumping down, he landed before her with barely a sound and held his hand out. He was taller than her by several inches, but unlike the other superheroes she had seen, he was incredibly slender. His suit was black as pitch with glowing green trim on his ribs and the inside of his arms and legs, as well as a similarly coloured emblem in the shape of a spider on his chest while the long legs of the one on his back reached around over and under his shoulders and down his side to his thighs. It clung to him like a second skin, showing off many of his tightly coiled muscles.

"Well, it's a pleasure to meet you. I'm Peter, also known as Spider-Man."

"Donna," she replied grabbing his hand and thanking Dionysus that the fresh air had helped sober her up enough so that she didn't act on the urge she suddenly had to run her hands over his well-defined chest.

"So, Donna," Peter said, leaning back and casually patting Agatha, setting her spinning in place and making her groan in discomfort. "If you haven't come out here to join the great drunken hunt, why are you wandering the jungles all alone in the middle of the night?"

"I can take care of myself," Donna snapped defensively.

"Never said you couldn't," Peter replied easily, jumping back into the tree and making himself another hammock. "Just figured you'd want to be in the party, not wandering unarmed where the big scary man might be lurking."

"From what I've heard, big isn't the word any of my sisters have used to describe you."

"That's because they haven't seen me outside this suit," Peter fired back.

Donna laughed and shook her head before jumping into the tree as well. "You know, my mother will not be happy to see what you've done to her subjects come morning."

"I was wondering why you looked so similar to Diana," Peter remarked, noticing the way she flinched at the comparison, he continued. "Of course, you're better looking than her my a wide margin. Must have something to do with not joining her and your mom in sitting on a ten-foot spear all day."

Donna giggled and felt her face warm up as she watched Peter's suit seemingly melt before transforming into a loose set of pants and a shirt. "Besides, the webs will dissolve on their own… eventually."

"When, exactly, would that be?"

"As soon as word spreads around of what happened, and these lovely ladies have had their egos taken down a few notches, Greg'll let them go."

"Greg?" Donna asked only to yelp in fright as Peter's shirt became fluid-like once more and rose above his chest on its own, molding itself into into a circle with a smiley face cut out of it before shifting into a hand and waving pleasantly. "What is that?" She asked, trying to force herself to stay calm.

"This is Greg," Peter said, high-fiving then bumping fists with the simulated symbiote hand before it melted back into his shirt. "He's an alien who bonded with me before I was brought here. He helps me out and keeps me company."

Blinking at the strangely mundane name for the strange living clothing Peter wore, Donna shook her head and got back on track as she heard one of the suspended amazons briefly wake up and struggle against her bonds before exhausting herself.

"You know, there are a more than a few women here who view humiliation like this as a fate worse than death."

Peter's face hardened as he looked down at the snoring lump beneath them that was Agatha. "Tough. I don't kill. Not if I don't have to."

"So why risk my mother and sister's wrath?" Donna asked. "Considering how easily you snuck up on me, you could have easily just evaded them until they get bored."

"And what do I do when they sober up and decide to try again?" Peter countered. "I would have to run and hide yet again until they came back with even more friends."

"They're going to do that anyway," Donna said. "Why risk letting them do so with the blessing of the queen?"

Peter sighed, expelling every last bit of air from his lungs and stared up at the cloudless sky. Donna focussed on his eyes, which were staring wistfully at the stars shining through the foliage above them. They were a deep, earthy brown - the colour of the dirt in the arena after a torrential rain. They were deep, the same way the earth beneath them held layers of different soil and minerals that protected the Earth's secrets and nurtured the life held up above.

"There is only one thing I have left to care about now, and it's that girl in your palace right now. She is dealing with the loss of everything she has ever known, and still finds the strength to keep smiling. She needed my help when we met, and she asked for my help when we met the League. From what I've learned of your people's past with men, I respect and understand your opinions on men as best as someone in my position can, and why you would be wary of one suddenly living among you.

"That being said, I'm here for Kara, not to be a scapegoat for misplaced anger from a thousand years ago. I have no desire to hurt anyone I don't have to, but that doesn't mean I won't defend myself."

Donna shrunk back slightly under the weight of Peter's tone. The loneliness in his eyes was heartbreaking, and she immediately understood why he and Kara were so close despite having only known each other for a short time. Taking a deep breath, she steeled herself and smiled as she leaned forward.

"Then I guess I have no choice," she said with a feigned sigh.

"What do you mean?" Peter asked, tensing despite the fact that his spider-sense was not going off.

"In order to protect my fellow amazons," Donna said. "I'll just have to befriend you as well as Kara. Most of my sisters will think twice about harassing you if they know that they'll risk offending one of their princesses in the process."

Peter relaxed and the smile he gave her, while smaller and not quite as bright as the ones Kara did, still filled her with the exact same warmth deep in her chest, causing her to return his smile even as her mind raced.

 _Oh, I'm in trouble._

 **A/N: So I know that Peter is coming across as more than a bit of an asshole, but considering what has happened to him, I like to imagine that, instead of brooding like Batman, his quips would wind up becoming a tad more hostile as he struggles with his past. That aside, this is going to have a small harem as I wanted to go more in depth into the relationships between Peter and the girls and between the girls themselves. So far, the roster is Kara, Donna, and Zatanna, with room for maybe one more, though I don't know who that would be. I'd love to read your suggestions, but more than just a name, or someone you think it would be hot to see with Peter, I'd really appreciate it if you could also write down why that particular female would work well with them.**

 **Anyway, thanks a ton for reading and reviewing, and I'll see you all next time!**


	4. Chapter 4

Donna and Peter spent a long time talking, getting to know one another before the Donna started yawning after every other word and Peter walked her back to the edge of the forest where she quietly walked back to her chambers. She told him about how Diana had rescued her as a little girl from a fire, and brought back to Themyscira where she discovered she had powers similar to Diana's own, and he told her vaguely about how he had been a regular teenager and lived with his aunt and uncle before acquiring his powers. She could tell that he was holding quite a bit back, but figured that it was fair, considering they had just met.

She woke up the next morning, shaking off the slight fog from the drinks she had the night before, thanking Dionysus that she had the foresight to drink in moderation as much of the island was bound to be hungover after a celebration of the size they had last night, and got dressed in her favourite strophion, twisting her hips slightly and smiling as the lavender fabric swirling around her thighs. Tying her hair above head in a simple bun, she happily made her way over to Kara's room and knocked on the door before carefully pushing it open and slipping inside.

She smiled as she watched Kara floating about six inches off the marble floor in front of the open balcony, her arms spread out as she absorbed the sunlight with a soft, contented smile on her face. There wasn't a thread of clothing on her, and Donna took the opportunity to appreciate the slender muscles of her back as they narrowed towards her waist before following the gentle curve of her waist, licking her lips at the way her backside was framed by the rising sun. Once she had finished trailing her eyes down the girls seemingly unending legs, Donna brought her eyes back up to Kara's face, roaming from her slim eyebrows over peacefully closed eyes with long lashes laying against her cheek, to her small nose and rosy lips stretched into a serene grin that made Donna smile just from the sight of it alone.

"Kara?" She asked quietly. Kara's eyes flickered open and she landed somewhat clumsily on the ground and turned around, the light from the rising sun making her blonde hair look like each strand had been touched by King Midas himself.

"Oh, Donna!" Kara exclaimed, flushing as she noticed her new friend's eyes roaming up and down her form. "Sorry, I didn't notice you come in."

"That's alright," Donna said, waving her off. "Even though I would love to continue watching you sunbathe, we need to go get something to eat and head over to the training grounds in the arena."

Kara nodded and was dressed in an instant, with only a few cracks in the marble floor as well. Luckily, she had discovered not long after arriving the night before, that most minor damage to the palace and other areas of the city magically repaired itself after a short while. Together, she and Donna made their way outside to grab some food, with Donna explaining some of what she could expect from her training while Kara tried to subtly examine her in a fashion similar to how the other girl had done to her. Her skin was a rich olive, and she was dressed in a flowing lavender garment that reached about a third of the way down her toned thighs, and showed off her collarbone and a teasing hint of cleavage. She looked very similar to Diana, with long, wavy black hair done up in an elegant bun, showing off her slender neck while a few curls hung loose to frame her face. There was an elegance to her face that reminded Kara of her aunt Astra, with high cheekbones, a straight nose, and full lips that made Kara feel a warm tingle just below her stomach when she looked at them. Unlike both Diana and Hippolyta, whose beauty was tempered, though not necessarily reduced, by a cool distance, making them seem above everyone else, Donna's face had an openness to it that pulled Kara closer, and made her feel comfortable. The other key difference between Donna and her sister and mother was their eyes; where Diana and Hippolyta had eyes the colour of the sky at noon, Donna's were more green, like the sea around the island of paradise, with hints of gold near the edges.

They were nearly to the kitchens when Hippolyta's voice rang through the halls of the palace causing them both to dash in her direction.

"What is the meaning of this?!" She demanded in outrage.

As soon as they arrived at the steps outside the palace, Donna saw the cause for the commotion and couldn't help but laugh. Dangling from the roof of the palace, right above the top of the steps and in plain view of the slowly gathering crowd of amazons were twenty-three cocoons of webbing with the exposed heads of twenty-three very hungover amazons sticking out of the top.

"I guess I was worried for nothing," Kara commented as Diana flew up to the nearest woman and started trying to tear away the webs clinging to her, prompting Donna to burst out in laughter.

"Donna," Hippolyta asked, rage cooling her tone as she whirled on her youngest. "Do you have any idea why more than twenty of your sisters are hanging from my ceiling?"

"I-I do," Donna said as she struggled to calm herself. "It would seem that Agatha and several others, in their infinite wisdom, decided to depart early from the celebrations last night to play a game of - what was it again?"

"Pin the spear on the Spider-Man," a voice said from above them, causing Donna to jump as Peter slowly descended from the ceiling upside down on a strand of webbing.

"I knew allowing you to come beyond these shores was a mistake," Hippolyta hissed as Peter jumped down and landed between Kara and Donna.

"Careful Your Majesty," Peter snarked holding up a finger and wagging it scoldingly. "It almost sounds like you're going against the word of your goddess."

Faster than Donna had ever seen her move, Diana flew at Peter and slammed him into the wall, causing him to grunt as she held him up by his throat.

"Hera may have said that you were to be allowed to step foot within Themyscira, but she never said what was to happen to you after that. Now, you _will_ release them."

To everyone's surprise, Peter seemed unconcerned as he glared down at Diana, the large green lenses of his mask making him seem particularly menacing. With exaggerated slowness, he reached up and grabbed both of her wrists and started to pull them away from him, causing gasps to ring through the crowd as Diana visibly struggled against his strength and her arms trembled. Stepping forward, Peter got right in her face, making full use of the very slight advantage in height he had over her, and glared right down into her eyes.

"Ask nicely, and I might," he said quietly. He released her, and in no time at all was back next to Donna and Kara. "Morning girls. Sorry for making a scene and everything," he said, all trace of whatever it was that had possessed him moments before, gone. "I don't mean to make things harder for either of you."

"That's alright, Peter," Kara said cheerily stepping forward and hugging him. "I'm just happy you're here with me."

"If anything, I should be thanking you," Donna added. "This has to have been the most entertained morning I've had in a long time."

"Happy to be of service. In fact, it was a pretty good workout," Peter replied as his suit reformed itself into a casual shirt and pants, disguising much of his physique and revealing his grinning face. The webbing holding the various amazons dissolved into dust and each of the women fell to the ground one after the other, landing on their feet by instinct alone. "Now, Kara, you ready to go work on controlling those powers of yours?"

Kara nodded and the two of them walked uncaringly past a fuming Hippolyta and were navigating the crowd of stunned amazons as Donna caught up to them.

"If they didn't hate you before, they do now," she said as she matched their pace.

"At least they'll have an actual reason now, instead of just the fact that I have a penis," Peter said. "Speaking of which, why aren't you trying to use my skin for a canoe?"

Donna shrugged. "They challenged you. You beat them, and weren't overly cruel. As far as I'm concerned, the matter's settled. As for your… lack of decorum concerning my sister and mother, it's nice seeing someone not throwing themselves at our feet for being royalty." She paused. "Plus did you see the looks on all their faces? Priceless!"

Peter and Kara both laughed and he threw an arm around both her and Kara's shoulders. "Donna, I get the feeling we're going to get along quite well."

Donna led them through the arena to the training grounds and grinned when they found a massive, nearly seven-foot tall woman with fiery red-hair and piercing green eyes standing in the center with her arms crossed.

"Artemis!" She cried as she ran forward and embraced the woman.

Artemis chuckled in her husky voice and returned the embrace, wrapping her thick, corded arms around Donna and squeezing her tight. "It's good to see you, Cub. Have you been keeping up with your training?"

Donna nodded enthusiastically. "I'm getting better every day," she proclaimed proudly. "Pretty soon I'll be able to beat you and Diana both."

"I'll believe it when I see it," Artemis replied, mirth shining in her warm, green eyes.

"Speaking of which, these are my friends, Peter and Kara. They're here so Kara can learn to control her powers."

"I had heard Lady Hera permitted a man to live on our island," Artemis said as she turned her gaze over to Peter, who met it with guarded friendliness. "You're a small one aren't you?"

"And you're a big one," Peter countered with a smirk. "Seriously, your tailor must make a killing on the amount of fabric you need alone."

Artemis laughed boisterously and held her hand out. "Well met, Peter. I am Artemis, I oversaw Diana's training before she left for man's world and joined that League of hers and will be assisting her in training the young woman here."

Peter nodded and reached out, grasping Artemis tightly by the forearm. "It's an honour to meet you, Artemis." He stepped aside and Artemis turned her gaze to the remaining youth standing before her.

"Um… hello there," Kara said, waving shyly. "I'm Kara Zor-El."

"Hello Kara," Artemis said warmly. "It's a pleasure to meet you."

For the next couple weeks, their days began the same way with Peter helping Kara with her control, having her practice different actions with varying amounts of power to figure out where her limit was, and how much she needed to restrict herself to pass as a regular human and, more importantly, not destroy everything she touched. Even before coming to Themyscira, she had already been making astounding progress, quickly grasping her powers as they developed thanks to Peter advising her to use them as much as possible when it was safe to. That had been the start of yet another rift between him and the Justice League, as they wanted her to only ever be using her powers if it was while helping others.

Peter could understand where they were coming from, and explained to her that he had purposefully neglected using his powers for the most part while out of costume in his universe as it was somewhat easier to hide his secret identity if everyone still thought he was a scrawny nobody. He had followed that up, however, by firmly emphasizing that they were _her_ powers and therefore _she_ was the one who was responsible for deciding how she used them.

Donna joined them, and after about an hour, they had gone through all of the exercises and were properly warmed up while an impatient Diana stepped forward and took over training Kara in combat. That made Peter somewhat angry, as he could tell that were it not for Artemis stepping every now and then, their sparring match would have been little more than the princess using Kara as a punching bag. He had done his research and seen some of Diana's exploits, as well as watched a couple of the interviews with her, and had no doubt that she was not only a woman of great integrity, but a skilled fighter as well, but her style of teaching seemed to be little more than repeatedly beating Kara to the ground and telling her what she did wrong.

 _I guess those who can't teach, save the world,_ Peter thought to himself as Kara was once again launched across the training ground towards where he sparred with Donna. Along with enhancing his abilities, his bond with Greg had given him access to more than a few new tricks, and he was determined to master them. At the moment, he was practicing with the twin blades that seemed to grow out of his wrists over his hands while Donna used a pair of swords. They had started by testing how strong the stingers, as Donna had affectionately called them, were and found that while Donna could break through one, it required her to use almost all of her considerable strength and Greg could repair it much faster than she could damage it. Peter, however, could snap them off as easily as if they were dried sticks, and grow a new one in its place. Even more interesting was the fact that, no matter how hard she tried, Kara couldn't do a single thing to even dent them.

Peter and Donna sparred for most of the morning, both sporting grins as they relished the challenge. Where Peter had his spider-sense and enhanced abilities, Donna had years more experience in fighting and held her own, dishing out almost as much as she took, and having the stamina to back it up. Eventually, Peter felt himself tiring, and grinned to himself behind his mask as he backflipped away from a particularly fierce swing from Donna before firing a web at her feet and yanking on it as he launched himself at her, tackling her to the ground and rolling around as they wrestled with each other, laughing the whole while.

It felt good to laugh, especially because Peter was fairly sure he hadn't really done much of it for the past six months before coming to this universe. He still ached when he thought about everything he lost, but as he and Donna rolled to a stop and he finally managed to get on top of her and pin her wrists over her head, he found himself feeling something that he hadn't felt for a long time before finding Kara and pulling her out of Gotham Bay, and that he was far too scared to even name, let alone do anything other than allow it to warm his chest.

"Are you going to let me up anytime soon?" Donna asked, smirking.

"I dunno," Peter replied, a slight growl rising in his voice. "I rather like the idea of you pinned underneath me, unable to do anything."

Donna shivered. In the past two weeks, she had grown quite a bit closer to both Peter and Kara, and found them to be two of her favourite people to be with. Kara was constantly smiling, and never failed to put her in a good mood by sheer exposure alone, while Peter never failed to say something that made one or both of them laugh. On top of that, he taught them both about the world at large, thanks to it being largely similar to his own. One thing both of them had noticed, however, was how protective her was of them. While perfectly confidant in both of their abilities in a fight, he was still more than happy to put himself between them and every amazon who was angry about his presence on the island and their continued association with him.

His habit of treating everyone the same and giving as good as he got drew the ire of many of Donna's sisters, especially when he had taken to calling her sister and mother Lady Di and Queen Hip Hop respectively after hearing them scold her for getting in yet another fight with Agatha.

"I give all my friends cute nicknames," he said as way of explanation, smiling innocently even as he was surrounded by more than thirty spears. "Isn't that right, Donna?"

It quickly became apparent that Peter was resourceful as he was intelligent, having quickly built himself a small hut in the forest behind the royal palace and loading the area with a multitude of traps. Donna hadn't known what she had been more impressed by: the fact that Peter was able to keep an entire culture of hunters and warriors away from his small shack, or the fact that none of the women he captured wound up with more than a few bruises.

Meanwhile, Kara had shown herself to be more than just sunshine and smiles. There was a depth to her that drew Donna and Peter both in with only a few words. Whether because she was from a different world, or simply because of who she was, she always had an interesting perspective that they were both happy to share. Her training was advancing in leaps and bounds thanks in large part to Peter and Artemis, and she was quickly gaining control of her powers - usually on breaking things when she was excited. Diana continued to push her during their sparring matches, and more than once Kara had asked why she had to learn to fight in the first place, to which Diana would answer that she needed to proper training if she ever hoped to help her cousin in protecting the world.

"I'm not like you two," Kara said later that night when she, Peter, and Donna were lying on a large, grassy cliff overlooking the beach, watching the stars. Peter had thought of offering to build a campfire, but thought better of it as Greg, while having been engineered to no longer be supremely vulnerable to fire, was still uncomfortable around it. As thanks for his consideration, Greg started generating quite a bit of heat, drawing both Kara and Donna closer to absorb some of it as well."I was never born to be a fighter. I wanted to join the Artists Guild. I wanted to _make_ things, not destroy them."

"But Kara," Donna insisted. "Think about it! You're gonna be a superhero! You'll get to fly around the world, stopping bad guys and saving people. Your cousin's name is spoken about with reverence even _here_ , and despite Peter's efforts to rekindle my people's hatred in men as well."

Peter was uncharacteristically quiet when she said this, and both Donna and Kara turned to look at him as sat up between them and stared out at the ocean.

"Peter?" Kara asked softly. "Are you okay?"

Peter opened his mouth only to close it and shake his head. "Yeah, I'm fine," he said softly. "I just got caught up in my own head."

"Do you want to talk about it?" Donna asked.

Peter smiled and turned his gaze back to the ocean.

Donna and Kara shared a sad look behind Peter's back and sat up as well. It was times like these, when it was just the three of them, that his cheerful facade slipped away slightly and they caught glimpses of the man underneath who was still hurting. Together, they both leaned against him, drawing comfort from one another.

"A wise man once told me, that with great power comes great responsibility," he said quietly, bringing his arms up to embrace them both as they leaned back to return their gazes to the stars. "It was those words that drove me to become a hero. I figured I with all the things I could do, I owed it to the world to use them to help people. I don't disagree with you learning to defend yourself, Kara. For no other reason than people are eventually going to figure out the link between you and your cousin, I will undoubtedly try to get to him through you. However, being a hero isn't something you can be conscripted into. You have to _want_ it. If it isn't what you want, though, you owe it to yourself to follow whatever your real passion is, because what Diana and the League do? It isn't a hobby, it's a way of life."

Kara nodded and rested her head on his shoulder, and Donna could tell that she was thinking deeply about what he had said. She too, found his insight into the topic of heroism interesting, but couldn't say that she was at all moved in her determination to join her older sister on the world stage someday. The three of them laid there in silence, eyes closing as Greg morphed himself into a large blanket, soft blanket and covered them against the cool ocean breeze as they enjoyed the warmth he provided.

The next morning, Peter awoke slowly with the sun on his face and felt extremely comfortable with the twin weights pressing down on his chest. He was about to start feeling guilty about just _how_ good he was feeling, when a tall shadow was cast over him, breaking him from his depressing spiral. He opened them and frowned when he saw Wonder Woman in her colourful armor staring down at him with her arms crossed, a disapproving scowl on her face.

"Get up," she ordered. "We have a mission."

 **A/N: So the current frontliner that I'm thinking of adding as the last girl is Poison Ivy. I like the idea of the last girl not necessarily being a hero, and Ivy seems like she might be an interesting character to explore that concept with. That being said, I'm still open to hearing your suggestions and ideas, so by all means keep them coming! I honestly didn't expect this much of a reception when I started so I'm flying by the seat of my pants at the moment until I can think up some decent framework for the story as a whole.**


	5. Chapter 5

"What could I be needed for that Earth's Mightiest Heroes can't handle?" Peter asked as he sat up and had Greg reform into his suit.

"You and Kara will be briefed on the flight over," Diana said.

"What about me?" Donna asked.

"You're staying here," Diana replied. "This is much too dangerous for you."

"I'm not going to sit around while my friends and sister are out there fighting!" Donna exclaimed, shooting to her feet.

"This isn't up for discussion," Diana snapped, turning to Peter. "You and Kara are to meet me at the Javelin in five minutes. Don't be late." Without another word, she spun on her heel and marched away.

"If she thinks I'm going to -" Donna began, only to be cut off by Peter.

"Kara, how good are you at flying?" Peter asked.

"I'm not at Kal's level yet," Kara admitted. "But I'm pretty good."

Peter nodded. "Good, take Donna and fly out of here. You both can follow us from a distance."

Kara nodded and grabbed Donna before taking off with a boom. Sighing to himself, Peter turned back towards the forest in the direction of the royal palace and leapt into the air before swinging between the branches. He couldn't say he was very happy about being ordered about like he was already a junior member of the Justice League, but if something was happening of a scale to which they needed to call on him and Kara, then he couldn't look the other way simply because he and Diana didn't get along.

He broke the treeline and flung himself on top of the Javelin, walking down its side until he was perpendicular to Wonder Woman and staring into her eyes.

"Where's Kara?" She demanded.

"She's going to fly herself," Peter replied, most of his teasing attitude gone as he reluctantly slipped back into the role of hero. "She's waiting in the air already, and will be able to hear you through the hull of the plane as you brief us."

Diana looked like she wanted to argue, but Peter never gave her the chance as he simply walked around the doorway into the cockpit of the plane and down the walls to the nearest seat. He'd never really been a fan of flying in planes, the residual fear from his parents' deaths making him uncomfortable even before he got his powers and developed a preference for swinging everywhere. He sat quietly as he watched Diana storm in and begin preparations for take off, and tried not to allow himself to feel too smug about the scowl on her face.

While he was bitter about the League's invasion of his privacy, he also was mature enough to acknowledge that it had been weeks ago, and that their fears about him being a threat were not totally irrational. That being said, he was apparently not mature enough to actually stop antagonizing Diana, or feeling annoyed at the thought of Kara having to deal with her cousin's constant hot-and-cold attitude.

"Strange creatures have started appearing through strange portals all along the West Coast of the United States," Diana said as they ascended into the clouds, breaking Peter out of his sulking. "We traced the source of the portals to be coming from somewhere beneath National City."

"So, we're going to take them down at the source?" Peter asked. "Sounds fun."

"No. You, Kara, and a couple of other sidekicks will follow the signal to the source, plant a signal jammer to stop the portals, and get out of there while the League cleans up the last of the creatures before shutting whatever is going on down."

Peter opened his mouth to protest both being called a sidekick and being ordered about like one, but thought better of it as he didn't want Kara and Donna getting too overconfident. Instead he contented himself with simply annoying Diana throughout the flight so as to keep her attention off the fact that there were two human shaped objects flying behind them as opposed to one.

"Seriously, though, not even a bag of peanuts," he exclaimed as they approached the edge of the continental United States. "Methinks the brooding bat has been skimping a bit on his air service." He waved his hands around exaggeratingly and smirked as he saw Diana grit her teeth and take several deep breaths before a mischievous smile that would have looked far more at home on her sister's face appeared and wiped away his own.

"The inflight service may be lacking," Diana said, pushing the Javelin into a steep dive and flicking a switch that made Peter's spider-sense go crazy. "But you'll never complain about waiting to disboard."

A hatch opened beneath him, and anyone without his senses would have been sent plummeting to the streets below. Luckily for him, Peter managed to web himself to the roof of the cockpit and hang upside down as he laughed at the way Diana was pouting.

"That was pretty good!" He cheered over the rushing wind. "Admit it, Lady Di, I'm rubbing off on you."

Diana schooled her features and looked away, scolding herself for acting so childishly. "We're above National City. The source of the signal is about eight kilometers north-east of here."

Peter raised a hand and saluted with two fingers before releasing the web and dropping through the hole in the floor. He tucked his arms to his side and straightened himself into a steep dive, rocketing towards the ground at an astounding rate before raising his arm and firing a web at the closest building. He watched as the Javelin sped away and grinned.

"You can come out now!" He called to the air as he swung as fast as he could. He had barely closed his mouth when Kara appeared next to him, dressed in the amazonian armor she used when training. Her arms were held out in front of her, and she smiled cheekily as she directed Peter's attention to Donna, who was dressed similarly and sitting cross legged on her back, arms crossed and pouting as she rode helplessly along on her friend's back.

"So how was flying Air Kara?" Peter asked as he did a quick flip and started swinging backwards.

"Screw you!" Donna shouted back, her ears still ringing from the rapid changes in pressure.

"She screamed like a baby," Kara informed him with a devious smile, her bright blue eyes shining.

Donna huffed and looked away from them stubbornly. "Are we there yet?"

Peter smirked and fired a quick web at Donna, yanking her off Kara's back and into his arms with a yelp. "There," he said as she fought to maintain her scowl while looking down at him. "That better, Princess?"

"It's not worse," Donna muttered, her cheeks flushing from the adrenaline before tucking her chin against his neck.

"We're nearly there," Kara said, looking away from her two best friends.

Peter nodded and swung around the next corner where he found two figures standing on the roof a textbook nondescript warehouse that screamed supervillain lair to his eyes.

"Hi there!" He said cheerily as he landed and gently released Donna right next to him while Kara slowly descended towards them as well. "You guys here for the costume party too?"

Standing before them were two boys that both looked quite a bit younger than Peter. One of them looked to only be a year or two younger than Peter. He was fairly tall, with dark skin and hard eyes. He was dressed in tight, black pants, and a red, sleeveless shirt that left his toned arms exposed and showed off the spiraling tattoos that wrapped from the back of his shoulder all the way down to the back of his hands.

The other couldn't have been older than twelve or thirteen. He barely reached the bottom of Peter's pectorals and had pale skin with short dark, hair. He was dressed in a dark red suit with a yellow trim and black cape and gloves. On his chest was a dark circle with the letter _R_ printed over it. His belt was a smaller version of Batman's and Peter made a point of keeping an eye on it as he looked into the boy's eyes concealed behind a domino mask.

"So I'm guessing you three are the ones who have had the League on edge for the past six weeks?" The boy asked in what Peter thought was an adorable imitation of Batman.

"Actually, that would be just me and Sunshine here," Peter replied as he threw an arm around Kara, who blushed. Holding out his other he introduced himself. "Spider-Man."

The older boy was the first to grab his outstretched hand, revealing that his own were in fact webbed, like the feet of a duck. "Aqualad," he said.

The two separated and the other boy started walking, cutting off Donna, who had been reaching out to shake Aqualad's hand herself, and making her scowl. "Robin," he growled in a high-pitched voice as he approached the door to the building and pulled a small device out of his belt, plugging it into the open control panel next to the door.

"Cute kid," Kara noted as the four of them joined Robin.

"This kid has been doing this thing longer than any of you," Robin grunted as the device beeped and the door opened with a click. "I don't need to be babysitting a bunch of rookies while handling this."

"If Batman's willing to throw in pizza money as well, I'd be more than happy to instead," Peter replied easily. He should have been annoyed, but he remembered when he thought the same way, and had turned down other heroes offering to help. That, and any kid who had to deal with Batman on a regular basis was bound to have issues. "Hey, quick question, what's the point of the mask?"

"You're wearing one, shouldn't you already know?" Robin asked as ducked through the doorway and started down the staircase two at a time.

"Well, yeah, but mine covers my whole head. Yours might as well be a pair of sunglasses."

Robin didn't answer and Peter stayed quiet for a moment as they stopped on the nearest landing and he slipped through the nearest door. Peter made to follow him, but the kid was already sneaking placing the grating back on a vent just as he heard footsteps approaching. Yanking his head back into the stairwell, he quietly shut the door and turned to the other three.

"Alright," he said with a sigh. "Kara, can you scan through the building for me? I want to know how far we are from our destination, and constant updates on enemy placements."

Kara nodded and narrowed her eyes as she stared to the floor. Peter turned his attention to the other two.

"Odds are, Robin is the one with the signal jammer. That means our job is to make sure he can do his job."

"So our primary objective would then be to divert attention away from wherever Robin is," Aqualad surmised. "Correct?"

"Got it in one, Gills," Peter replied.

"Pe - er… Spider-Man, this plays likely has more guards than Hades has harpies," Donna pointed out. "How are we supposed to cause a distraction that big without getting ourselves killed?"

"I'm working on it," Peter said, turning to Kara. "Any good news, Sunshine?"

"This place is huge," Kara muttered as she stared all around her. "It goes well over thirty floors into the ground, and each one has countless labs working on different things."

"If it's that big, then it's going to need a lot of power," Peter murmured to himself as he brought his hand to his chin and started pacing. "If we can knock out their generators, then we might be able to cause enough of a comotion to open up the way for Robin without forcing them to close up shop."

"Why would you want the secret evil lab to stay open?" Donna asked.

"Because then we'll know where they are so they can be investigated later," Aqualad deduced. "Genius."

"I hope so," Peter replied. "We only have one shot, and we still need to figure out a way to overload their generators."

"I may be able to help with that," Aqualad said as his tattoos began to glow and sparks of electricity danced down his arms.

"Excellent!" Peter cheered before sobering and turning to them one at a time. "Alright then, we'll head back outside and drop down to the ground level before heading for the sewers. From there, Kara and Donna can use their strength to help us infiltrate from below while Robin comes in from above. Once inside, Kara will maintain periodic sweeps of as much as she can, and keep an eye on Robin as we make our way for the generators."

The three of them nodded and within minutes, they were beneath the roads as Kara led them through the sewers.

"So, you're from Atlantis?" Donna asked as she and Aqualad walked behind Kara while Peter climbed along the ceiling.

"I am," Aqualad replied, staring ahead.

"What's it like?"

"Wet."

Donna sighed and Peter couldn't help but snicker. "Sorry Princess, but not everyone is gonna be as friendly as Kara and I on the first date."

"But that's why we're her favourites," Kara added, not looking up from whatever she was looking at as she bumped into the corner of a wall and knocked out a chunk of it. Donna stuck out her tongue only for Peter to hold up a fist as his spider-sense started tingling. Moments later, the sound of boots splashing through sewage echoed through the tunnels. With a quick gesture to Aqualad, he shot a web at Donna and pulled her up to him while Kara floated several inches into the air.

Aqualad nodded and unsheathed a pair of hilts from his back as his tattoos began to glow. Crouching down, he plunged the hilts into the filthy water and Peter could hear the electricity snap and crackle, followed by the splashes of three bodies falling to the ground as he stood back up. Lowering Donna, he quickly crawled his way over to the fallen bodies and found three men armed nearly to the teeth with heavy duty rifles and body armor. Working quickly, he webbed each of them to the ceiling, making sure to cover their mouths so they couldn't scream before grabbing the earpiece each of them were wearing and tossing one to Aqualad and Donna while keeping the last for himself.

"How'd they get down here?" He asked himself.

"There's an elevator about a hundred meters that way," Kara replied, pointing in what he thought was a northern-ish direction.

"I guess we found our infiltration point," Aqualad noted as he began walking.

"Kara, where's Robin?" Peter asked.

"He's about five floors below us," Kara replied.

"Wow, kid moves fast," Donna noted with a whistle.

Peter frowned. Something about that sounded too easy. Sure, vents were a good way to go undetected when taking down a local crime boss, but whoever these people had some serious money backing them. There had to have been some form of security barring Robin's progression. Then again, maybe Peter was just doing the same thing to the kid that almost every hero that he had met in his universe had done to him once they got an idea of how young he was. Robin _had_ been trained by Batman, who was supposedly the world's greatest detective, and unofficial leader of the Justice League despite not having any powers beyond that of a normal, albeit filthy rich and ridiculously intelligent, man. From what Peter had read, he represented humanity's ability to stand tall amongst beings who might as well be gods. Regardless of his personal feelings about the man - and the Justice League as a whole - he was in no place to deny Batman's abilities. If Robin had inherited that kind of skill, then maybe it wasn't wrong for him to already be so deep into the enemy's territory.

His hopes were dashed, however, when Kara gasped and grabbed his arm with enough strength to have severed it from a regular human.

"Robin's been captured!" She cried.

"What happened?" Peter asked as they took off at a sprint towards the elevator shaft. Kara had it open in an instant and Peter leapt across the gap, sticking himself to the wall while Donna and Aqualad grabbed the cables and Kara simply flew.

"Some other group of people is attacking the facility!" She shouted. "I don't know where they came from, but all of a sudden everyone in the room just under him started shooting each other. Robin jumped in to try and break them up and wound up captured."

Peter shook his head in frustration and grit his teeth. "All right, new plan. Kara, does anything in this facility look like the source of the portals?"

Kara was silent as she spun around examining everything she could see. "About twenty floors down," she said. "There's a room full of pods that hold the creatures. They're being released and walking towards some machine."

"We don't have time for finesse anymore," Peter said. "Fly as fast as you can through everything between you and that machine. Make sure that it's broken beyond repair, then get out of there. If those things can take on the League, I don't even want to know what they're capable of. The rest of us are going after Robin."

The three of them nodded, and Kara vanished with a gust of wind and a loud crash as she plowed through layers of steel and concrete towards her goal while the rest of them continued to climb down as fast as they could. They arrived on the seventh sub-level and Peter ripped open the elevator doors, allowing a cloud of dust and debris to billow into the elevator shaft. He could hear the sounds of guns firing nearby, and (as crazy as it sounded) was relieved to see regular bullet casings littering the ground. That meant that Kara would be fine against any armed opposition between her and the portal device.

"Excuse me?" He asked as he flipped himself through the doorway and kicked the nearest person into the wall. "Has anyone seen a short, prepubescent ninja in a red suit? I was supposed to be babysitting him and well…" he webbed another gunman to the ceiling as the other two joined the fray, Donna making use of her superhuman abilities and nigh-unbreakable armor to charge through the gunfire shield first while Aqualad created twin weapons out of a sack of water on his waist and weaved through the crowd with grace. "Suffice to say, if Batman finds out, I can kiss that Nanny of the Year award goodbye."

They dealt with them in mere minutes, thirty gun-toting thugs proving to be no match for three superpowered individuals working together when a loud rumbling shook the ground beneath their feet.

"I think Kara found the portal device," Donna noted.

"Let's hurry," Peter ordered, taking off at a sprint. They came across several groups of people dressed as guards wheeling barrels of a strange blue liquid down the hall while other guards shot at them.

"It was a double-cross," Aqualad observed.

"So that's why Kara didn't see them," Donna added.

"That doesn't matter at the moment," Peter said. He shot a web through the open door of a lab and yanked an empty vial into his hand as he leapt over the group surrounding the barrels and quickly filled it before flipping onto the other side, the other two not far behind.

"Should we not stop them?" Aqualad asked.

"Robin comes first." Peter placed the vial against his waist and Greg molded around it, securing it to him and cushioning it against the strain of Peter's acrobatic movements.

Both of them looked conflicted, but another bout of rumbling prompted them to set aside their arguments and follow Peter down the hallway. After about of minute of running at a dead sprint, he heard the familiar sounds of fists impacting flesh and someone shouting in pain. Pushing himself even farther, he burst through the door and found Robin on the ground being beaten by a large man wearing brass knuckles.

"You know," he remarked as he shot a web at the man's raised fist. "I sometimes wonder what has to happen to a person so that they don't see any problem with beating the stuffing out of a kid." He leapt over the man and used the web to hurl him over his shoulder and slam the thug into the ground. "Like, seriously, who hurt you? Besides me, that is."

He kicked the man in the temple for good measure, then stooped down to pick Robin up.

"What are you doing?" The boy croaked, blood streaming down from his broken nose. "They're getting away!"

More rumbling preceded the ground near where Peter was crouching to explode and a filthy, dust-covered Kara glided out with a triumphant grin.

"They won't be fixing that for a while," she said smugly before gasping at the sight of Robin laying in Peter's arms.

"Kara, I need you to look at his spine," Peter ordered, maintaining staying calm before Kara could start fretting over Robin like she did him and Donna when one of them hurt themselves during training. "Tell me if there's anything broken."

Kara nodded and stared at Robin with glassy eyes. "His spine is intact," she whimpered.

"Good." Peter rose to his feet and tossed Robin over his shoulder where Greg kept him still. "Fly ahead and join Donna and Aqualad, we need to get out of here, and you three are our best bet at a speedy exit."

Kara stared at him and Peter stared back until she took a deep breath and steeled herself before blasting out of the room to join the others. Unfortunately, she used a bit too much power, a bit too close to the large hole she had blown through the floor, and the rest of it started crumbling, forcing Peter to leap into the air and begin web-swinging after her. Within minutes the five of them were reunited and rushing towards the hole that led back to the sewers. In order to avoid drawing attention, he had them all follow the water until they reached the nearest drainage point and emerged into the fresh air, overlooking the ocean.

"Well, as far as your first mission goes," he said turning to his two friends after dropping Robin on the ground. "I'd call that a success."

 **A/N: All right, we are starting to actually get into the plot. I'm still working on the dialog for some of the characters, but hopefully that will improve as I flesh them out. Hopefully you liked Aqualad, and were able to tolerate Robin. I figured since this is pretty early in most of their careers, he would be fairly arrogant as he's been working with Batman for months now, and thinks he's some sort of mini caped crusader. We also saw a glimpse of a hint of Diana's more playful side. I know that I've bashed on the League quite a bit, but that's because most of this is from Peter's perspective. If it broadened you would see that the Justice League are all really good people. They just don't get along with Peter.**

 **Lastly, I've seen overwhelming support for Poison Ivy, so I'm for sure going to be adding her as the fourth. If there were a fifth, Starfire would be the first pick, but Kara is already a naive, alien ball of sunshine with a tragic past, so while the two would be able to understand each other, I'm aiming more for them all to be able to find the similarities in how they each feel in spite if their wildly different lives and circumstances, not thanks to them. Anyway, thank you all so much for reading and letting me know what you think. I love hearing your ideas and suggestions.**


	6. Chapter 6

"A success?" Superman demanded as he and the rest of the Justice League stared down at Peter. Robin had been taken for medical assistance, and Aquaman - a large, dark-skinned man with blond hair and blue eyes with a trident, pants made of fish scales and little else - had, after a long, private discussion in some strange language, dismissed Aqualad, who nearly cheered with relief before simply diving into the ocean and leaving Peter, Donna, and Kara to deal with the rest of the League plus some strange woman with massive, grey wings sprouting from her back. "You were supposed to infiltrate the facility, plant the jammer, and get out without being spotted."

"Circumstances called for a change of plans," Peter replied evenly, meeting each of the members of the League in the eye.

Kara was once again struck by how small he looked compared to them. Sure he was about as tall as Diana - maybe slightly taller - but he was still shorter than every other member except for Batman and the Green Lantern. On top of that, his slender form was overshadowed by the muscular titans that glared at him as he stood between them and her and Donna. However, in spite of the fact that Kara was fairly sure Kal could snap him in half with a flick of the wrist, Peter continued to face them defiantly, taking responsibility for everything that had happened.

"Because of you, an unknown group of hostiles was able to make off with an unknown, potentially dangerous substance," Batman rumbled. "On top of that, we still don't know who was responsible for releasing those strange creatures as the lab was scuttled before we could even get there."

"Because he was saving the _child_ you sent in there!" Donna exclaimed.

"You have no say in this Donna," Diana snapped. "You shouldn't have even been here to start with. In fact, as soon as we're done here, I'm taking you back to Themyscira."

"Diana," Flash said cautiously. "Don't you think you're being a little harsh?"

"No, she's not," Kal replied, turning his gaze over to Kara. "I expected better of you, Kara. You should be able to control yourself better than that."

White-hot anger filled Kara as she looked into Kal's disappointed eyes. Who was he to judge her, when he had never even been there to help with her training?

"I'm the one who told Kara to let loose like that," Peter growled. "She did her job perfectly. So, maybe instead of harping on us for accomplishing our primary objective and all surviving, we can focus on catching those guys who stole that funky blue Kool-Aid."

"There isn't much we can do, I'm afraid," J'onn said. "As soon as word gets out that the Justice League is investigating them, the thieves will go to ground."

"Regardless, whoever was releasing those monsters all over is still at large," Green Lantern added. "It's unlikely this was their only base of operations, meaning they still pose a more immediate threat."

"Then I'll look into it myself."

"No," Batman rumbled.

Peter crossed his arms and cocked his hips. "Why not?"

"The League will look into the thieves themselves once we've dealt with this other problem. You'll only get in the way."

"And what makes you think I would listen to you?" Peter asked.

Batman said nothing but walked slowly forward until he was nose to nose with him, while Kara noticed the other members of the Justice League tensing.

"Batman, there can't be any harm in letting the kid help, can there?" Asked the Flash.

"He's simply trying to do the right thing," J'onn added.

"He's a danger to himself and others," Diana retorted.

Kara ignored the surprisingly calm debate between the other members of the Justice League as she watched Peter stare into Batman's eyes, unfazed.

"You don't want to test me, kid," Batman growled. "You'll lose."

"You're nothing I haven't dealt with before," Peter leaned forward and whispered in a voice so quiet, Kara was fairly sure she and Kal were the only ones who could hear him. "Bruce."

Batman's eyes widened a fraction of a centimeter before he got himself under control, but it was more than enough for Peter to turn around and start walking down the beach towards the city.

"I don't see what you guys have against him," Flash continued to argue. "He's no different from us."

Kara tuned the rest of the argument out as Donna grabbed her hand and drew her attention. She saw the determination in her friend's eyes, and nodded as she started to feel the same. Wrapping an arm around Donna's waist, Kara blasted off into the air and quickly caught up to Peter, who had started swinging from building to building. He glanced over at them as they matched his pace and seemed to be contemplating saying something, but changed his mind at the last moment.

"We need to find out what that blue stuff was that those guys stole," he explained. "If we can do that, we can figure out who would have the resources to make it and who would want to steal it."

"How are we going to do that?" Donna asked.

"First things first," he grunted as he kicked himself higher. "We need a place to sleep and clothes to wear so that we don't stand out."

Kara was interrupted as her cousin appeared in front of them in a blur of speed.

"Where do you think you're going?" He exclaimed, only to grunt as Peter used him as a springboard and launched himself higher into the air.

"We don't have any money or identification," he continued, completely ignoring Kal as he kept swinging. In the distance, Kara could hear the Flash burst out in a fit of laughter and smiled. "So we're going to have to rely on the local homeless shelter, and see if there's a library with a computer we can use. Luckily we seem to be in a relatively warm part of the continent, so we won't have to worry about freezing."

"That's good to know," Donna joked. "I'd hate for mother to hear I ran away to be a hero only to freeze to death on my first night."

None of them said anything for a moment and Peter came to a stop on a high-up rooftop about eight kilometers from the beach.

"Are you both sure about this?" He asked.

"Peter, whatever it was those people stole might be dangerous," Kara replied seriously.

"We agreed with your decision to let them go in order to help Robin," Donna added. "That means that the three of us all have a responsibility to track them down and stop them before anything bad happens."

Peter remained completely silent as he looked between the two girls who had quickly become the only friends he had in this entire universe that he didn't wear.

"It won't be easy," he said. "Not only did we just spurn the Justice League, but we're starting from means the three of us are going to have to find jobs as well as work as superheroes. You'll need to both hide your identities. There will be nights where we won't have anything to eat."

"Peter," Donna said. "We're with you. No matter what."

Peter sighed and shook his head, his mask retreating to show him smiling softly as he looked between the two of them.

*(OoO)*

Superman had stopped trying to get in their way after the third time Peter used his face to launch himself further. He was surprised that the League wasn't trying harder to apprehend them, but figured that one of them must have argued that he, Donna, and Kara were just throwing a tantrum and would come crawling back as soon as they realized that they were in over their heads. Luckily, Peter had been doing this for going on four years already, and been toeing the line of homelessness for most of it. Now, though, he wouldn't even need to spend what little money he would make on web fluid, as Greg was taking care of that.

That being said, his first order of business was making money. Considering Donna hadn't been outside of the island of paradise since she had been rescued by Diana roughly seventy years ago, and Kara was a literal alien, he'd have to help them find jobs where their limited social awareness and occasional bouts of super strength wouldn't draw too much attention.

The three of them landed in an alley next to a store where trash bags full of donated clothing lay waiting to be donated. He instructed the girls to find something that fit, while Greg transformed into a pair of black, baggy jeans, and a large green hoodie.

Grabbing a backpack that he saw at the bottom of one of the bags, Peter stuffed as much clothing as he could into one of the pockets while the girls looked for something to wear as well.

Kara wound up wearing a pastel green dress that was a little too tight around her shoulders. It didn't have a neckline to speak of, and would have been choking her rather harshly were it not for the fact that she could have a cruise-liner resting on her trachea and keep breathing. Donna, on the other hand, had found a pair of ripped bermuda shorts that hung dangerously off her hips and only covered about a quarter of her thighs. She had slipped on a pair of neon pink flip-flops and a matching pink shirt with the words _Daddy's Girl_ written across her chest. Peter could barely contain his snicker of laughter at that, and she pouted until Kara bent down to find some shoes and ripped the back of her dress open, leaving most of her spine on display. Grabbing their armor, Peter pulled them apart into the individual pieces of metal and leather and shoved them into the bag as well.

With that done, he set about to finding a nice place to crash for the night until they could find a shelter, as both Kara and Donna looked understandably weary after their first day of superhero work as well as making the sudden choice to turn away from their families. He still couldn't believe that either of them would choose him over the League, but set his insecurities aside with the help of Greg until he found a nice park about twenty blocks west of where they had found their clothes. Taking refuge underneath a large maple tree, the three of them drifted off to sleep, keeping each other warm.

*(OoO)*

"Donna, wake up."

Donna groaned as she forced her tired eyes open. The sun was still hours from rising, and it took her a moment to remember where she was as she looked around, only to be met with the disapproving glare of her mother.

"Mother!" She yelped, leaping to her feet and rousing both Peter and Kara, the former of whom snapped to attention immediately and started scanning for threats.

Standing before them with a scowl on her face was a translucent projection of Hippolyta, her arms crossed as she looked her daughter up and down.

"What do you think you're doing, young lady?" She demanded hotly. "First you run away from home, now Diana tells me that you refuse to come back."

"I was thinking that Peter and Kara needed my help," Donna retorted hotly.

"Your sister and her friends have it under control," Hippolyta said. "She has decades of experience over you."

"Diana and her friends are stretched too thin," Donna said. "They're just too proud to admit it. By the time they finish their current mission, the trail will have gone cold."

"And you think you can do better?"

"Considering they're doing _nothing,_ yes. I do."

"You don't have her gifts, Donna. What can you do other than bring negative attention from Man's world to Themyscira?"

"I might not be as powerful as Diana," Donna snarled, "But that doesn't mean I can just look the other way when I know people are going to get hurt. However there's no need for you to worry, we're going to be working under cover anyway, so I'll make sure to tell anyone who asks that I'm just another orphan looking for charity."

"I think that's enough, Ghost Lady," Peter said as he stepped between Donna and her mother and looked down into her eyes. "You may not have the same gifts as your sister, Donna. But that doesn't mean you can't be just as much a hero as she is, and it doesn't mean you're any less of an amazon than she is, even if you're hiding your identity."

Donna took a shaky breath and closed her eyes, enjoying the warmth of Peter's touch as he cupped her cheek while Kara hugged her gently from behind. "Thank you," she murmured.

Peter nodded and they all separated. Hippolyta looked uncomfortable - almost regretful - but Donna didn't give her the chance to say anything more as she waved her cuffs through her mother's image, dispelling it.

She opened her mouth to thank her two friends for their support was interrupted by the sound of sirens as a caravan of loud vehicles with flashing red and blue lights, that, if she remembered correctly, meant they were police, blazed down the street.

By the time Donna turned her attention back to him, Greg had already changed to add a scarf that was wrapped around Peter's head as he grabbed some clothes out of his bags and tossed them to her and Kara.

"Make sure your faces are covered," he said before leaping into the air and swinging after them.

They both nodded and grabbed some clothes out of the bag, changing as quickly as they could before tearing apart a pair of shirts and wrapping the strips around their heads. With her face covered, Donna allowed herself to pout as Kara picked her up and hurtled after Peter. They caught up with him moments before reaching the scene and the three of them landed on a rooftop to survey the damage below them.

Fighting filled the streets for about three blocks, with police having set up a barricade behind which they crouched as dozens of people in a variety of colours shot at them and each other. More than one building had already caught fire, and people screamed for help as they were forced on to the street where they were quickly caught in the crossfire.

"Kara, focus on getting people out of those buildings and onto a nearby rooftop where it's safe," Peter ordered. "Once you've got them all, break open the fire hydrants and use your breath to keep the fires from spreading, then join me and Donna. Donna, find whatever you can use as a shield and help protect the police officers. If one of those gangsters gets too close to you, send him back my way, where I'll immobilize him. Remember that we're unknowns here, so don't expect the police to be friendly, let alone help, and try not to hurt the other guys too much, Our job here is to protect people so that the police can do theirs. Got it?"

Donna and Kara nodded seriously, and watched as Peter leapt off the building and webbed up the nearest gangster, already cracking wise as he did so. Donna turned to Kara just as she was engulfed in a quick, extremely tight hug that made her ribs creak.

"Be careful," Kara murmured as she pulled back and blasted towards the nearest building.

"You too," Donna whispered before taking a deep breath and jumping off the building herself. The pavement cracked slightly beneath her as she rolled over her shoulder and crouched next to a police car. She took a moment to breathe deeply and examined her surroundings. She could see police trying desperately to stop the fighting gangs before things escalated beyond the realm of their control, but it was a nearly impossible task, especially when they couldn't even leave their hiding place without getting shot.

Her chest ached as she saw one man bravely stand up to try and get to a family that was cowering in a nearby alley, only to be taken out by a bullet from above. Smoke was already filling the air from the strange firebombs the gangsters kept throwing around, so Donna couldn't quite make out where the shot had come from, but she figured that whoever had fired it was using the terrified family as bate and would fire upon anyone who got near them.

Her mind made up, Donna grabbed the doors of the nearest vehicle and yanked them off with a tug, using them as a pair of shields while she sprinted across the street towards the alley. She heard the sharp dings of bullets bouncing off her impromptu shields and made sure to keep her head down. Within seconds she was standing over a pair of men who were crouched on the ground with their arms around a pair of sobbing children.

"Come with me," she said kindly. "I'm going to get you all to safety."

The men looked her over skeptically until another hail of gunfire rained down on them and Donna leapt in front of it, holding her two shields up and protecting them even as she felt the hot pain along the outside of her calf indicating one of them had grazed her. She turned towards the pair of men and instructed them to stay close as she slowly led them down the street, blocking any stray bullets that came their way and on one occasion pushing a man who had come running towards them with a shove that sent him twenty feet through the air. After basically crawling for about five minutes, Donna finally got the small family around the police barricade where she handed them off to the nearest officer before turning around and sprinting back towards the chaos.

She continued going from building to building, evacuating as many civilians as she could while Peter helped the police with actually stopping the gangsters. Kara joined her after an indeterminate amount of time, using her superspeed to hasten the process while Donna would keep the gangsters away from her. Eventually, the sun began to rise and the combatants left standing seemed to unanimously agree to set aside their battle for the time being and escape. There was a truly massive web spreading between the buildings above the street, and hanging from it were at least forty human-shaped cocoons of webbing. Most of the fires had been put out, and there was no longer any risk of them spreading.

Donna and Kara were both covered in dirt, dust, and soot, and were panting in exhaustion as they joined Peter, who was littered with cuts and scrapes but otherwise looked fine. He straightened himself when he saw them and jogged over to wrap his arms around them both.

"I'm glad you're both okay," he mumbled as he held them tight.

"Excuse me," someone asked as the three of them separated. Donna turned towards the voice and saw a woman with tanned skin and long, black curls walking towards them. She was dressed in a white button-up shirt underneath a vest that had the letters _NCPD_ across the front. A badge of some sort hung from her hip and she regarded them with suspicion. "Who exactly are you three, and what do you think you're doing here?"

Donna bristled and was about to retort angrily when Peter stepped forward with his hand out.

"I'm Spider-Man, and these are my friends," he said respectfully. "I'm sorry about our somewhat… shabby appearance, but those people needed help and we didn't have time to change."

"You could be dressed in a three thousand dollar suit for all I care," the woman said. "It doesn't stop what you're doing from being illegal."

This time Kara stepped forward, but Peter held up his hand. "You saw what the three of us can do detective…"

"Sawyer."

"Why come after us, when you can use us?"

Sawyer raised an eyebrow and frowned. "What are you talking about?" But Peter had already turned around and grabbed Donna by the waist.

"Just some food for thought!" He shouted as he leapt into the air and swung away, Donna laughing wildly as Kara caught up.

Their careers as superheroes had officially begun.

 **A/N: So, hopefully, this shows a bit of where the League is coming from, and that not all of them are against Peter, Kara, and Donna helping out. I'm not trying to show them being bad people, so much as having legitimate reasons that the main characters just happen to disagree strongly with. Anyway, I'm still working on when the meeting with Ivy and Zatanna will be, but, at least the plot is starting to get rolling and we got to meet Maggie Sawyer briefly. I want the gang to develop a good relationship with the police, not unlike the one between Gordon and Batman, but they are a bunch of superpowered hobos who just appeared and started saving people, so it's understandable that no one's jumping in to start a partnership.**


	7. Chapter 7

Peter watched as the woman huffed in frustration and marched back to where her driver was waiting nervously for her. Ever since he and the girls had made their first appearance a week ago, they had become the various news outlets' favourite subject. So far, no one had any clue who the three mysterious youths were that appeared at night when the various gangs of National City came out to wreak havoc. Well, no one except Cat Grant. He had looked her up and found that she used to work for the Daily Planet in Metropolis before coming out west and building herself a little media empire nearly from scratch. Kara was smitten with her, and had immediately asked Peter for help with finding a job with her. Luckily, they had learned that the young Kryptonian had even more of a knack for photography than Peter did, and she was now raking in a small amount of cash. The woman had made J. Jonah Jameson seem downright pleasant, but Peter couldn't deny that she was a journalist through and through as she went between homeless shelters in an attempt to track him and the girls down. She also seemed to have a good side to her, as he had watched her scold a man for attempting to rob her before taking him out to lunch. When they came out of the small diner an hour later, the man was borderline crying as he thanked her profusely for his new employment as a janitor at one of her buildings.

Having seen everything he needed to, Peter leapt from the building where he had been crouched and swung back to the rundown apartment building where he and the girls were holed up. It had taken a couple days, but Peter was able to finally scrounge up enough cash doing simple things like juggling and dancing in the street before having Kara fly him to a casino in Gotham. He had researched the Iceberg Lounge thoroughly, and felt very little remorse using his prodigious mind to turn eighty dollars into eight thousand in a matter of hours. By the time they got back, with a firm understanding of why Felicia Hardy enjoyed what she did so much, they had enough money to rent an apartment in one of the worst parts of National City and feed and clothe themselves for a while.

Donna had also found employment with a small barbershop down the street from their apartment after throwing some goons into a dumpster when she saw them shaking down the owner, a nice old man named Lenny who insisted on being called Pops. With living expenses out of the way, they had enough money to buy equipment so that Peter could get to work analyzing the blue vial of liquid he had grabbed at the facility a week earlier as well as construct some decent uniforms for the girls.

Using the disassembled pieces of the armor the girls had worn from Themyscira and a deflated white-water raft he had bought online, and a couple hundred dollars worth of thick leather, Peter cobbled together a pair of suits consisting of leggings that would easily fit underneath a regular pair of jeans as well as hooded jackets with special electromagnets he sewed into the fabric to keep them from pulled off. The final touch was a pair of paintball masks that Peter modified with small radios so they could keep in contact with him. He had offered to sew on Kara's family crest but she and Donna both insisted on not having anything that would easily identify them in relation to their families. Both outfits were black with green trims, so as to match Greg's primary colour scheme as he transformed into a simple leather jacket and jeans with Peter's mask and the spider symbol on his back being the only things that could identify him from any other person walking down the street. Lastly, Peter took some inspiration from Captain America, and used the remaining pieces of armor to cobble together a pair of shields for them both. They weren't much bigger than standard bucklers, but with one on each arm, and the girls' phenomenal reflexes, he was confidant they'd be more than enough to do what they needed to. Not only did he not want Kara relying on her invulnerability too much, but he hoped that, like Steve Rogers did in his universe, the pair of them could be seen as symbols by the people they helped.

With their suits finished, the girls were more than ready to join Peter during the nights as he fought to help keep National City from tearing itself apart. The only thing left were the names they wanted to be addressed by while in costume. He had suggested Supergirl and Wonder Girl, but both were immediately shot down. Neither Kara nor Donna wanted to be thought of as little more than copies of their respective relatives. Peter could respect that. He explained to them that they didn't have to come up with names right away, telling them the story of how he had originally wanted to be known as the Human Spider, before someone with knack for appealing to the masses had changed it without his consent. Both of them could tell he was still holding something back concerning that particular story from his past, but chose not to push him. They decided to give the matter some thought, and decide at a later date when they weren't overwhelmed with saving people.

He still found it odd that all criminal activity seemed to suddenly come to an end once the sun rose, but set it on the backburner as he read over the results of the tests he had been running on the blue liquid.

"Near as I can tell," he explained when Donna and Kara joined him in their little apartment that afternoon. "It's a sort of performance enhancer. A small sample of this stuff could make an average person nearly as strong as us for a short time."

"If regular criminals start taking this potion, the police will be overwhelmed in minutes," Donna said gravely. "They can barely contain these nightly battles as it is."

"But how do we track it?" Kara asked.

"There is the slightest radioactive signature coming off it," Peter said. "But I don't have the materials to build a Geiger counter sensitive to pick it up - and, even then, we'd have to canvas the city. Our best bet, then, is probably the hospital."

"Why is that?" Donna asked.

"This stuff might make whoever takes it nearly as strong as us," Peter elaborated. "But that's all it does. On top of having enhanced strength, the three of us are more durable as well. Our bones and muscles are tougher. Someone who took this would be too strong for their own body. At best they would tear muscles all over their body, at worst, their bones would start to break under the strain, and they would risk tearing themselves apart just from wincing in pain."

"So, we're going to the hospital to see if anyone has been admitted with strange internal injuries?" Kara deduced.

Peter nodded. "That's right. Unfortunately, though, the odds of these guys going to a hospital are virtually zero. So we're gonna have to check the next best place."

"And where is that?" Donna asked.

Peter smiled grimly as he stood and Greg transformed into his suit. "The morgue. But that's gonna have to wait. The sun's going down, and you both know what that means."

Donna and Kara nodded and quickly changed into their suits before following him out the window as they heard the telltale pops of gunfire breakout not far from their apartment.

"One of these days, I'm going to get my own way of getting around the city," Donna muttered as she once more maneuvered herself to sit on Kara's back.

"Aww, but Donna," Kara whined. "I like carrying you around!"

"And you two look so cute together!" Peter added, flinging himself higher than them and doing several flips as he dropped back down. Donna flushed and crossed her arms with a harrumph as the other two continued teasing her before they approached the source of the gunfire and found the police in yet another shoot-out.

Peter spotted Detective Sawyer shouting at the officers as they seemed to focus more on fighting the various gang members than the civilians who were caught in the crossfire. He spent another moment analyzing the scene below him as Kara and Donna dropped down and immediately began blocking bullets from both sides as they helped the people still outside get to safety, and filed it all away in a section of his mind to ruminate over later.

"Hey guys!" He shouted as he dove between bullets and fired a web at a man and a woman dressed in bright red and holding what looked like assault rifles. "Is this party invite-only, or more of a community event?" This attracted the attention of several differently coloured gang members, one of whom he had to tackle to the ground as his spider-sense went off and a bullet whizzed overhead, just missing the gangster, who he now saw was probably a year or two younger than him. He could hear Sawyer screaming at the officer he presumed had fired the weapon, but she was quickly distracted by a molotov cocktail that crashed into the top of the cruiser she was crouching behind, bathing it in flames.

Tossing the kid towards a wall and quickly webbing him there, Peter sprang to his feet in time to catch another molotov while grabbing another gangster's gun and yanking it out of his hands as he bent backwards to avoid a hail of gunfire.

"Didn't anybody ever tell you guys it's dangerous to play with fire?" Peter asked as he extinguished the flaming rag and swung his confiscated gun around knocking another pair of thugs off their feet and hurling it at a third. Moments later, the three of them were wrapped up like christmas presents and tossed down an alley. "I mean, really, what would Smokey the Bear think?"

He continued to steadily immobilize the gangsters one after another until one of them had enough sense to yell for them to get in their cars. Unfortunately, Peter easily had the strength to put a stop to that plan, and quickly ensnared the getaway vehicles in webbing, trapping the criminals within.

"Come on!" He shouted at the men yelling at him soundlessly from the inside of the cars. "Even you guys have to appreciate the irony of being trapped in your getaway cars!"

"Spider-Man!"

Peter turned and saw Detective Sawyer running towards him. In the past week, Peter and Kara (after a couple introductory lessons into Earth's 'primitive' technology) had made use of the National City Library's computers to carefully hack into the Police Department to see who could be trusted while Donna dove into books about the history and culture that had changed in the one hundred and twenty years since Diana had rescued and brought her to Themyscira. They had all been relieved to find out that, while there was clear evidence of more cops being dirty than clean in National City, Detective Margaret Sawyer seemed to be one of the good guys.

"Detective," he greeted. "What's a place like you doing in a girl like this?"

Sawyer opened her mouth to respond when Peter's spider-sense went off once more and he saw the officers behind her raise their guns. Grabbing the woman by the waist, he leapt into the air just in time to avoid another wall of bullets.

"Put me down!" Sawyer shouted.

"Oh, no, Detective please, no need for thanks," Peter replied sarcastically as he landed on a nearby rooftop and placed her on her feet. "Saving people's kind of my thing."

"Spider-Man!" Kara shouted as she and Donna landed next to him.

"Are you okay?" Donna asked.

"I'm fine," Peter replied. "The good detective here warned me before anything could happen."

"There's a warrant out for the three of you," Sawyer explained. "Which, in this city, is about the same as having a bounty on your head."

"Man, we really picked a great city to set up shop," Peter muttered.

"At least it's warm here," Kara teased and he felt Greg give a mental purr of agreement.

 _Don't you start too,_ he thought as he turned back to Detective Sawyer.

"If there really is a warrant out for us, why aren't you arresting us right now?" Peter asked.

"I've seen what the three of you can do," Sawyer replied. "I'm not bringing you in unless you come willingly or I've got every officer in National City holding you at gunpoint."

"So what did you want, then?" Donna followed up.

"For the last week, deaths by violent crime have been at record lows," Sawyer replied slowly. "And while arrests have gone up, it's not nearly as significant. Why is that?"

Peter sighed and rested his hands on his hips. "We're not cops, Detective. We're just three people who have some extraordinary gifts and feel a responsibility to use those gifts to help others. We don't have access to police resources, or the authority to press charges. If my friends here wanted to, they could take probably take out every single criminal in the city in a day or two."

"Then why don't they?"

"Because, that's not our job," Donna replied. "Who are we to force ourselves onto this city as arbiters of right and wrong?"

Sawyer frowned and crossed her arms. "And how is that not what you're doing right now?"

"The only thing we're focussed on is keeping people safe," Kara explained. "You're so busy trying to destroy your enemy and keep yourselves alive that you aren't doing the same for those you've sworn to protect."

"I spend the night incapacitating these thugs as humanely as possible Detective," Peter finished. "I only do that so that the bullets stop flying and people don't have to worry about being caught in the crossfire. Whether or not these guys are punished by the law isn't up to me, though. That's your prerogative."

Sawyer looked conflicted as her radio went off, giving Peter, Kara, and Donna the opportunity to escape unnoticed.

"Can you two handle things for a bit?" He asked as he swung from building.

"Why?" Donna asked. She had taken to running across the rooftops in order to save herself a modicum of dignity while Kara flew right next to her.

"I want to check out the morgue," he explained. "I figure that I'll have a better chance of finding a lead on our blue goo thieves now than in the morning when they're bound to be swamped."

"And you want to go by yourself?" Kara asked.

Peter came to a stop and smiled under his mask at the expression of concern both his friends wore as they stared at him. "Don't worry, I'll be fine. I have plenty of experience in sneaking around creepy places I'm not supposed to be - something the three of us haven't been able to practice much."

"All the more reason for us to join you," Donna argued.

"Maybe," Peter conceded. "But there are still people who need help. When I worked alone in my universe, I'd always feel guilty because I couldn't be in multiple places at once. If I took time off to investigate something, it was almost inevitable that someone would wind up getting hurt because I wasn't there. Now, though, there are three of us. We can afford to multitask."

Both Donna and Kara looked as if they wanted to argue further, before they shared some sort of silent conversation with one another and turned back to him.

"All right," Kara said before she and Donna wrapped him in a hug that made his ribs creak. "But you better come back to us."

"Don't worry," Peter said, laughing as he felt a warmth fill his chest that he was unwilling to admit felt painfully familiar. "We all have our communicators, and I'll make sure to keep you guys updated to what's going on. That being said, the signal isn't encrypted yet, so be careful what you say over it."

"What should we do about the criminals that you usually take care of?" Donna asked.

"Just keep doing what you have been. Defend yourselves if necessary, but leave them to the police. Neither of you have complete control over your strength when it comes to dealing with regular humans, and we could wind up losing what little goodwill we've gained with the people if someone got hurt and they could tie it, no matter how loosely, to you." Both of them nodded and Peter took the opportunity to wrap his arms around them both and squeeze them tightly. "Be careful," he whispered. "Both of you."

"You too," Kara replied, her voice wavering.

"Don't make us have to come and rescue you," Donna teased as they separated.

"I'll try," Peter laughed. "Try not to give the police too hard a time."

Diving off the rooftop, Peter swung himself away, ignoring the ache in his chest and the gnawing worry in the back of his mind.

 _Stop worrying so much,_ he told himself. _Donna has decades of combat experience with some of the most powerful warriors on the planet, and Kara is literally bulletproof. They'll be fine for a couple hours._

Swinging as fast as he could, Peter quickly found himself perched on top of a building across the street from the National City Morgue. The morgue, like many other vital buildings, was located in the North side of town. Unlike the slums in the South Side, which became a virtual ghost town by twilight as the resident prepared themselves for another night of battle between the various gangs and the police, the North Side remained quite active. Crime was minimal on this side of town, with the break in at the lab when he first arrived in the city being the only notable event in a long while, and quickly being sweeped under the rug to preserve the image of a shining coastal city. This was just more proof that there was something bigger going on with respect to how crime worked in this city, and Peter made sure to remember anything he observed as he investigated the thieves from a week earlier.

He easily leapt across the busy street and landed on the roof of the morgue. With a little transformative help from Greg, he quickly unscrewed a vent on the roof and dropped himself inside. He made a mental note to hack the city planner's office as he attempted to navigate the maze of vents throughout the building, and was about to give up and drop down into the hallway beneath him when he heard a door open and froze in place.

"God, why did we have to be the ones to deal with this?" One voice asked.

"Man, would you shut up?" Another scolded.

"Hey, screw you, man!" Thing 1 exclaimed. "I left a good thing with the Kings to make money, not drag steal dead circus freaks from the morgue!"

"I don't give two shits why you left," Thing 2 grunted. "The Boss don't want no one looking into this, so we're gonna take care of it. You got a problem with that, you can join this heavy sunnova bitch in the incinerator."

Peter narrowed his eyes and quietly shuffled along the vent as he followed the two thugs through the building.

"This woulda been way easier if the boss would just let us try some of that product," Thing 1 complained.

"It'd be easier if you shut up as well," Thing 2 grunted.

"Oh, come on man!" Thing 1 exclaimed. "One sip and you could take on Superman himself! Don't tell me that's not tempting."

"Never said it wasn't," Thing 2 agreed. "But it's only been, like, a week, since we jacked it from that lab downtown. Now we got these wannabe superheroes crashing in every night, too."

"Sure, but they're just as busy as the police," Thing 1 continued. "National City's got the best nightlife in the country."

"What about Gotham?" Thing 2 countered.

"Eh, they've got the bat. Even when he's off with his little friends saving the world, do you really wanna run with nutjobs like the clown? At least here we can still make some decent scratch. And once that little bitch Haly packs up and gets the show on the road, we won't have to worry about a thing."

"Not unless we don't hurry up and get rid of this body," Thing 2 growled. "Now shut up and get moving! Boss expects us back at the tracks before morning."

Peter considered dropping down and stopping the men from incinerating whatever corpse they were carrying; it had a chance of setting the police on the trail after them. However, if he took these guys down, whoever they worked for would be spooked. They would pack up and go into hiding before the police could even begin connecting the dots. There wouldn't even be enough time for Peter and the girls to properly investigate what was going on. Sighing internally, and thanking Greg for the mental equivalent of a comforting pat on the back, Peter slipped back through the vents and made his way outside.

Looking out over the streets he listened to the sound of sirens, figuring that would be the best place to find Donna and Kara. Taking a deep breath, he jumped off the roof and sped back into the chaos that nightmarishly mirrored the sparkling city below him.

 **A/N: So, this chapter took longer than I would have liked, and, while I'm still not terribly happy with it, I know that there's a point where I just need to declare it finished and move on. Either way, it did what it needed to in terms of moving the plot forward. Also, for those of you wondering, Peter's current suit is similar to the Last Stand outfit from Amazing Spider-Man 500, with Kara and Donna's being similar in style. The difference however, is that their suits are mostly black with a green trim. The shields he made for the girls are similar in shape to the twin shields Cap used in the Infinity War movie, though they're a little bigger.**

 **Anyway, thanks for reading, and tune in next time when we get a step closer to the one behind the lab heist and maybe meet a beautiful sorceress along the way!**


	8. Chapter 8

"So, what exactly are we looking for?" Kara asked while stifling a yawn.

"One of the goons I overheard said that they were expected back at the tracks," Peter replied. Donna had a shift at Lenny's and was thus unable to join them when the sun rose and Peter proposed checking out the train tracks on the East side of town. They were just shy of the border between the pristine North Side of National City, and the South Ghettos. Train cars in varying states of cleanliness littered the tracks, and he could see several homeless people exiting them as the chaos of the previous night died down. "He also mentioned someone by the name of Haly. By the way they referred to the stuff they stole as product, I'm thinking they plan on turning it into some kind of drug. This Haly woman might be their means of transporting it."

Kara failed to restrain herself this time and yawned loudly before replying. "So, what do you plan on doing when we find them?"

Peter chuckled and couldn't stop himself from comparing the tired woman floating next to him with a puppy as she squinted her eyes and smacked her lips tiredly. "Nothing much, don't worry. As soon as we figure out where they're hiding out, Greg will detach a piece of himself and stick it somewhere inconspicuous. That way he can lead me back to it no matter where it is."

"Then we can go to sleep?" Kara asked.

"Then we can go to sleep."

"In that case, I think I found what we're looking for."

"What?" Peter asked. "How?"

Kara smirked and tapped her temple. "X-ray vision, remember?"

"Oh. Right."

"There's a big train about a kilometer North of here labeled _Haly's International Traveling Circus._ "

"That sounds like as good a method of secretly shipping product as I can think of," Peter noted, jumping off the floodlight upon which he had been perched as he surveyed the trainyard.

"Also, Haly's full name is Jack Haly," Kara added as she leisurely flew after him.

"Hey, even I'm wrong every once in a while," Peter called out jokingly.

In less than a minute, the two of them had landed on top of lead car on the train, crouching low as they watched various circus folk walk about.

 _Guess those guys weren't kidding when they called that corpse a circus freak,_ he thought to himself glumly. He watched as their theory was proven correct when a dozen gangsters rolled up in massive SUVs, before exiting and stomping through the camp like they owned the place. One of the gangsters, a tall, slim hispanic man with slicked-back hair in a rumpled button-up and slacks smirked as he watched the circus-folk fearfully get out of the way of him and his posse.

"I do love a good circus," the leader said with a wide grin that showed off twin rows of straight, if yellowing teeth. " _Mi Papi_ would always take me to see them when they rolled into town. He loved the clowns." His eyes swept over the cowering people with a predatory gleam and Peter clenched his fist, even as he reached over and placed a restraining arm across Kara's back.

"Kara, go back to the apartment," he whispered.

Kara whipped her head around so fast, Peter was almost afraid of a sonic boom giving away their location. "What?!" She hissed. "Peter -"

"Do it, Kara," he ordered. "Now. I'll join you soon and explain everything then."

Kara still looked like she wanted to argue, but Peter willed his mask to recede and glared harshly at her. Kara stared into his eyes and felt herself shrink back slightly under the weight of his gaze. There was a hardness there that she had only ever seen once before in her Aunt Alura. It was the look of a warrior. Taking a deep breath, she nodded reluctantly and carefully inched off the train car, flying low until she was far enough away that she wouldn't give him away before rocketing back to their apartment.

Peter, meanwhile, kept himself low as he planted the tiny piece of Greg on the car before quietly moving himself closer to the action.

"Hey, you!" The gangster shouted, pointing at one of the men trying to make himself invisible near one of the massive tents. "You guys got any clowns?"

The man started mumbling incoherently and the gangster frowned. "What was that, _Amigo?_ I don't speak Little Bitch."

The man was shorter than average with a bald head and squinty features. His mismatched clothes hung off him in waves and undulated as he quivered beneath the gangster's stare.

"I-I-I am the clown," he muttered a little louder.

"Is that so?" The gangster said, stalking towards the terrified man with visible glee.

"Mateo!" A voice shouted, bringing him to a halt before turning and grinning even wider. Stomping towards him were a man and a woman. The man was clearly getting along in years, and was dressed in a bright red jacket with the tails fluttering behind him. He was a good foot and a half shorter than Mateo, visibly leaning on the cane he carried as he walked closer. In spite of this, the other performers regarded him with respect and adoration, visibly sagging with relief as he walked by. Peter couldn't get a good look at the woman stalking next to him as her back was to him so he only saw the long, dark brown hair that fell down her back in soft waves. She was dressed casually in a pair of shorts and a t-shirt, but Peter could guess from the way Mateo and his goons were practically drooling as they undressed her with their eyes she was probably quite beautiful regardless of her choice of attire.

" _Senor_ Haly!" Mateo shouted his arms outstretched as if welcoming an old friend. " _Hermano!_ How are you doing today?"

"Your boss said to stay away from my performers, Mateo," Haly said angrily, his shoulders bouncing tiredly as he tried to catch his breath.

"Oh, we're not here to cause any trouble," Mateo replied, a look of insincere innocence on his face. "My compatriots and I simply wanted to get a closer look at the famous Haly's Circus!"

"Well, you've seen it," said the woman, her voice had a breathiness to it that would have seemed warm, if not downright sensual, were it not for the arctic chill in her tone. "Now get out."

"Oh, Zatanna," Mateo pouted playfully reaching out to stroke the woman's crossed arms. " _Chiquita,_ you almost sound unhappy to see me." His hand slid up and gently wrapped around her throat. "And after I gave you such a pretty gift, too."

"Take your hands off me," Zatanna growled.

Mateo's smile was nearly a fathom wide as he tightened his grip. "Now that's not very nice, _Chiquita._ Me and my friends work so hard to protect your little band of freaks, and that's how you say thank you?"

"Yeah," one of the thugs agreed. "Remember who you work for."

Mateo froze for a moment before closing his eyes and sighing as he stepped back from Zatanna and turned to the man who had spoke. "What did you say?" He asked, his voice calm.

"N-Nothing, Boss," the thug stammered. "J-just, y'know, reminding 'em to respect you."

"So, you're saying I can't make people respect me on my own?"

"W-What? No!" The man started to shake as Mateo took slow, measured steps toward him.

"Then, what? You're saying _Senor_ Haly, who has generously offered to help _El Tiburon_ move his product, doesn't know who he's working for?" Mateo took another step forward, getting right in the man's face. "That he's stupid, or something?"

"No!" The man's head shook violently. "I-I-I j-just didn't l-like the way the girl was talking to you."

"Oh? So you think I don't know how to handle my women?" Peter watched angrily as Mateo delighted in the man's fear before socking him in the face with a lightning fast jab that dropped him to the ground. "You think I'm some kinda pussy?!"

For minutes, the only sound throughout the trainyard were Mateo's grunts and the man's screams as he was viciously beaten. Finally, Mateo stood back up and whooped loudly. "Now that's what I'm talkin' about!" He shouted, laughing gleefully. He held up his fist, blood dripping from his curled knuckles. "Look at that! Look at that! That's the good stuff! You see that _Senor_ Haly? Look at that! That's the good stuff!"

Peter was clenching his fists hard enough to dent the metal of the train car beneath him as he watched. Nobody in the camp moved a muscle as Mateo jumped around hooting and hollering. Zatanna was shaking in place as she watched him, her hands at her side, and Peter could see her fists clenched just as tightly as his own.

"Oh, what's wrong, _Chiquita?"_ Mateo asked, jumping back into her face. "You wanna use some of that magic of yours? You upset that I can stroll in here and do whatever the _fuck_ I want, and all you can do with that pretty collar around your neck is stand around like a bitch, and watch? Tell you what, you take me back to your room and we can work out that frustration together."

"The last thing you want is to be stuck in a room alone with me," Zatanna snarled.

Mateo smirked and buried a fist in Zatanna's gut, causing her to double over with a grunt. Peter was impressed with how well she maintained her composure, even when Mateo grabbed her hair and yanked her head back so he could stare down into her eyes, she continued to glare balefully up at him, not showing an ounce of fear.

"The attitude was cute at first, _Puta,_ now I find I'm losing my patience." He released her with a kick to the shin, forcing her to her knees as he turned to Haly. "Make sure the next shipment is properly stored, and you're little freaks don't touch it."

Without another word, he stormed off back towards the cars, leaving the man he had beaten to moan pathetically on the ground as he and his remaining thugs hopped in and drove off. Sighing, Peter closed his eyes and forced himself to calm down before sneaking off the car and making his way back home.

*(OoO)*

Thirty minutes later, Peter finally slipped through the window into the living room of the small, two-bedroom apartment he shared with Donna and Kara. Kara was sitting on the ratty futon he normally slept on, frowning as she studiously avoided his eyes and focused on the book in her lap.

"Hey," he said awkwardly, taking a seat next to her as Greg transformed into a comfy pair of track pants and a t-shirt. "Did you get back here okay?"

"You know I did," Kara replied, turning a page. She had changed out of her costume into a pair of blue pyjama pants with pictures of cartoon dogs decorating them and a pastel yellow tank top.

"Maybe," Peter conceded. "Doesn't stop me from worrying, though."

"Pan," she replied, pointing at him before turning her finger to herself. "Meet teapot."

Peter chuckled and shook his head. Kara had done a remarkable job adapting to life on Earth in the short months since she had landed, however it seemed that she still stumbled slightly when it came to certain idioms. "That's fair. I'm sorry I made you worry."

"I just don't understand," Kara said quietly, putting down her book and reaching for Peter's hand. "Don't you trust me to help you?"

"Of course I do!" Peter urged, squeezing her hand. "You're one of the kindest people I've ever met, Kara. You and Donna have proven yourselves time and time again - not just to me, but to the world at large - that you would never stand by if there was a chance you could help someone in need."

"Then why did you send me away?" Kara asked, desperation shining in her gaze.

"It's because you're so kind that I had to order you to leave," Peter explained. Kara looked even more confused and hurt as he said that and he rushed to elaborate. "Sometimes… we have to make difficult decisions. Decisions where there isn't necessarily a right answer. When those gangsters showed up at the circus, it was almost certain that someone was going to get hurt. I knew that was going to happen, and I have a feeling you did too. But if we had just rushed in and took those guys down, not only would their boss get tipped off that we were coming for him, but all those performers at the circus would get blamed as well."

"So, you're saying that in order to stop the thieves, we had to let people get hurt?" Kara echoed suspiciously.

"Unfortunately," Peter confirmed sadly. "It's not easy, and I can't even say for sure that it's right, but at the time, I made the decision that it _was_ necessary."

"I still don't see why you felt the need to send me away."

"Because, at the moment, there was no time to explain all this to you. I knew that if you saw those gangsters hurting someone, you wouldn't be able to sit idly by and do nothing."

Kara was silent for several minutes as she contemplated what he said. Meanwhile, exhaustion was finally creeping up on Peter, and he let himself lean back as his eyes drifted closed. Within moments, he was fast asleep, and Kara couldn't help but smiled as his breathing evened out and he started to tilt to the side.

"I know you were just looking out for me," she murmured as she set her book aside and guided him down onto her lap. "But we're here for you as well. You don't have to shoulder all the responsibility by yourself."

It didn't take long for Kara to fall asleep as well. Eventually, Donna's shift at Lenny's ended, and she came back to the apartment to see that they had shifted positions at some point, and now Kara was laying securely in Peter's arms while he buried his face in her golden hair. Smiling, Donna quietly set her stuff down and grabbed the small burner phone Peter had bought for the three of them before stepping into another room to order them some food. It never failed to amuse Peter by how fascinated both she and Kara were by the wonders of Man's world. Most of the time, Kara was astounded by how primitive everything was, while Donna was entranced by how much Technology and society had changed from what little she remembered before being rescued. One thing they could both appreciate for similar reasons, however, was the fact that with a simple phone call, whatever meal they wanted could be delivered straight to their door. Peter had recently introduced the two of them to the wonders of pizza, and Donna was more than happy to have any excuse to eat it now.

Twenty-eight minutes later, both Peter and Kara were awoken by the sound of knocking on the door and the smell of fresh pizza in the air. The sun was shining, and Kara extricated herself from Peter's arms, her face almost glowing as it burned a bright cherry red, and darted to her room, which had been chosen because it received the most sunlight, making sure to go at a reasonable speed while Donna opened the door for the delivery boy.. She changed in almost an instant, and used the remaining time to bask in the warm, yellow light coming through her window while Peter paid for the food.

By the time she left her room, seven large boxes were piled high next to the futon, with both Peter and Donna digging into another respectively. She was practically drooling as she unconsciously left the ground and floated towards them, causing the other two to burst out into fits of laughter. Between the three of them, six of the pizzas were devoured in record time while the remaining three were put into the large fridge that Peter had found and fixed up for them.

"So, what did you learn?" Donna asked once they had all settled back down onto the couch. There was a large television that Peter had also managed to salvage sitting across from them, and he plugged the computer he had bought into it so that the news could play in the background while they talked.

"Our thieves are forcing Haly's circus to help them move the chemical they stole. The one dealing with them is a particularly friendly nutcase by the name of Mateo," Peter recounted everything he had seen, causing Kara to nearly gasp out of sympathy for Jack Haly and his performers while Donna's fists clenched tightly. "I can track wherever that train goes, but it's not enough."

"Why not?" Donna asked. "We go there, we take out this Mateo and his men, make them tell us where their leader is, and have him arrested."

"I agree that we should help Haly and his circus," Peter replied. "But if we take out Mateo, then their boss is just going to send someone else to strongarm them. As for the boss himself, we'll need to get actual evidence that will put this _Tiburon_ guy away for good."

"So, what do we propose we do?" Kara asked.

Peter smiled as he looked between the two of them. "Would either of you two ladies like to accompany me to go see the circus?"

 **A/N: For such a short chapter. this took far too long to write. I'm still unhappy with how Mateo turned out, but hopefully he'll be more fleshed out as the story goes on. Basically, I was inspired by characters like Tuco from Breaking Bad, and Vaas from Far Cry 3. I wanted a criminal who was obviously unhinged and violent, but not in the same way the Joker is, and considering National City is a stand in for L.A. I figured having the guy be sorta like a mid-tier cartel boss would make sense. As for why Zatanna didn't do anything, there was a small hint in there, but if you didn't catch it, don't worry, I'll go more in-depth in the chapters to come.**

 **Anyway, thanks for reading, and thank you for your patience. I'm still trying to work out what the over-arching plot is gonna be, but it is starting to come together in my head.**


	9. Chapter 9

"Shield-Maiden?" Donna complained as she read the cover of the latest issue of _CatCo News_. "Seriously?"

"What's wrong with that?" Peter replied, swatting Kara's hand playfully as she reached for some of the popcorn sitting in his lap. After about two weeks of waiting while Peter scavenged and built as much surveillance equipment as he could on their limited budget, they were finally sitting at the bottom of the wooden seats, near the entrance to Haly's Circus. The plan was to wait until the show was well underway and to sneak away so that they could investigate the camp and train for any clues that would lead them to where Mateo and his boss were keeping the chemicals they had stolen. They hadn't stopped trying to contain the strange nightly chaos that took over the Southern parts of National City, however, and Cat Grant, while no closer to uncovering their real identities, had taken upon herself to give Kara and Donna their own official superhero monikers. "At least they put she actually put the hyphen in for you. I've had to resort to leaving notes on some of the goons I web up so people know how to spell my name."

"What's wrong with your name?" Kara asked, pouting as Peter once again rebuffed her from stealing his food. "I think it's nice."

"It's just so… unimaginative," Donna groaned. "You got lucky, that woman has everyone calling you the Valkyrie. I got the name because I'm a woman, and I carry shields."

"And Kara got it because she's a woman who fights, and can fly," Peter countered. "Batman has his because he's a guy dressed up like a bat. The point is, not only does this allow you two to separate slightly from me, so that people don't think you're my sidekicks or something, but it gives a name to the women who have been out every night trying to clean up the streets. It allows little girls to say that when they grow up, they want to be just like the Valkyrie or the Shield-Maiden."

"I guess," Donna conceded as the lights in the massive tent where they were seated lowered before an explosion of brightly coloured smoke lit up the center of the ring on the ground and Jack Haly appeared from within cloud.

"Ladies and gentlemen! Children of all ages! Welcome! Tonight you will see acts of daring that will leave you rooted to the edge of your seats. Illusions that will have you questioning your very concept of reality itself! My name is Jack Haly, and together with my circus, I would like to take you on a journey to the edges of the human experience, where the lines between possible and impossible no longer exist, and the only limits are the time we have together! So, please! Sit back, relax, and allow me to introduce Jack Haly's Spectacular Traveling Circus!"

Kara clapped and whooped loudly along with the rest of the crowd while Peter and Donna joined in with a tad less enthusiasm as he leaned over to speak in her ear.

"It's been less than a month since we got here," he reassured her. "Give it time. You don't seriously think people took Wonder Woman seriously at first either, do you?"

Donna sighed and allowed her shoulders to slump before smiling gratefully up at him, her teal-green eyes shining. "Thank you, Peter. I guess I was just feeling insecure."

"And you're allowed to," Kara chimed in reaching across Peter to grab her hand in support. "You don't think I constantly wonder what Kal would think of how we're doing?"

"Kara's right," Peter continued. "What matters is that we keep helping people, and we keep trying to do better. Besides, I hated my name for a while too. Give it a little while, and you'll grow into it, trust me."

Donna's smile extended into a proper grin and the three of them took a quiet moment amidst the hollering of the crowd as they watched whatever the first act was to bask in the mutual emotional support that had sprouted between them in the short time they had known each other. The moment passed, and, without needing to speak, the three of them stood up and exited the tent. Peter's clothes morphed into his usual suit while Donna and Kara both reached into the backpacks they had brought with them and pulled out their jackets and masks. With both of their hoods up, and all of their faces concealed, Kara grabbed the two of them and quietly flew over the big top before landing on the other side where a multitude of props and open trailers littered the campground between the tent and the train.

"All right," Peter said quietly. "We've only got a couple hours before nightfall, so let's split up and see what we can find. Anyone runs into trouble, we immediately contact the other two, understand?" He waited for Kara and Donna to nod before continuing. "There are listening devices in your bags that we need to plant in each trailer and as many of the train cars as we can. If you happen to stumble across the chemicals, grab a sample and then hide another tracer on them. Any vehicles you think are suspicious also should get one."

"Understood," Donna said while Kara nodded seriously.

"Good, let's get this done and find out who the guy that's evil enough to threaten innocent circus folk is."

They split up and Peter immediately headed for the front of the train, dashing from trailer to prop bucket to trailer and planting as many of the small listening devices he had built as he could. He had taken an recording of Haly's introduction minutes ago, and would be able to use it to isolate his voice from the dozens of sounds they would pick up once they were done. He was mere feet from the train when the click of a gun behind him made him freeze. His spider-sense had yet to go off, so he turned very slowly to find himself staring down the barrel into the cool brown eyes of the woman he recognised as the one who had been with Haly when he spied on their little meeting with Meteo a week before.

Unlike last time, Zatanna was clearly dressed to perform, as she was wearing a rather flattering version of a tuxedo with fishnets covering her legs and a cute top hat sitting crooked upon her head.

"So, what's National City's new superhero doing sneaking around back here?" She asked, her voice almost a purr as she looked him up and down.

"Oh, you know," Peter replied casually. His spider-sense had still yet to go off, meaning that he wasn't in immediate danger at that very moment, so long as he played his cards right. "I've always loved the circus. I wanted to see where the magic happened."

Zatanna smiled mirthlessly and took a step forward. "Didn't anyone ever tell you that a magician never reveals her secrets?"

"Maybe, but that doesn't mean I can't go looking for 'em," Peter said, relaxing his posture. "Besides, it's not your secrets we're interested in finding."

"So those two girls bumbling about the rest of the camp are with you?" Zatanna asked.

"In a manner of speaking," Peter replied. "We're still working on the stealth aspect of the gig. Figured this would be a good place to practice."

Zatanna smirked and cocked her head as she cocked the gun in her hand. "Sorry, handsome, but you figured wrong. Now why don't you and your little friends get out of here before I have to do something you'll regret?"

"How about, my friends and I continue our search, and I give you one free shot on that Mateo guy when we catch him?" Peter countered.

"If you know who Mateo is, then you should know how bad of an idea this is," Zatanna urged. "If he, or - God forbid, his boss - caught wind that you were here, then not only are you dead, but everyone you know is dead, as well as everyone at this circus, and everyone they know too."

"He wouldn't kill you until you had moved his product for him," Peter replied. "That's plenty of time to take him down."

"No, he wouldn't kill _Haly_ , because he's the one with his name on the train. I told him I would do everything in my power to keep his people safe, and I've already failed once. I won't let it happen again."

"And why would one of Haly's performers make that kind of promise to him?" Peter asked. "Unless you're not really one of his performers?"

Zatanna stiffened, and Peter's spider-sense finally went off as her hand holding the gun started to shake.

"Who are you?" She demanded. "How do you know that?"

"Lucky guess," Peter replied, holding his hands out soothingly. "But, if you're so serious about helping Haly and his people, why don't you come with me, and we can share information?"

Zatanna looked understandably conflicted as she stared at Peter, trying to find something in his masked gaze or posture. She was so focussed on him, that she didn't notice Kara or Donna coming until they both landed next to him and jumped when Kara spoke.

"Everything's all set," she said happily. "Do you think we could get back to the show now? I want to see the animals."

"Who's this?" Donna asked suspiciously, both she and Kara stiffened when they noticed the gun she was holding, but Peter put his arm out to stop them from taking any action.

"This is Zatanna," Peter explained. "She's been doing her best to protect Haly and his people until now. I was just telling her how we're trying to bring down Mateo and his boss before the circus gets caught in the crossfire."

Zatanna cautiously lowered her gun and looked between the three of them as Kara stepped forward and waved cheerily.

"Hello, Zatanna! My name is Ka - er… Valkyrie! It's a pleasure to meet you!"

"Likewise," Zatanna said slowly, her eyebrow raised in curiosity. "So, how exactly do you plan on keeping Haly and his people safe?"

"Spider-Man," Donna interrupted. "We're running low on time."

"So we are," Peter agreed. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small radio as well as a tracker. "I know you don't think you can trust us, but we really do want to help. Plant this on Mateo, and we'll be able to track him wherever he goes. That radio is encrypted, so if you want to meet us after sunrise, use it and we'll go wherever you think is safe."

"Why are you doing this?" Zatanna asked. "Why trust me?"

"Because you're one of the good guys," Peter replied. "I can tell just by looking at you."

Without another word, he leapt into the air and began swinging away while Kara waved once more and grabbed a skeptical Donna, who squawked indignantly, before flying after him. The sun was just dipping beneath the horizon and the nightly tune of sirens racing towards the South Side was filling the air as Peter swung between the skyscrapers of pristine North Side, the girls not far behind, as they made their way to join the police once more, when Peter's spider-sense went off and he twisted in midair to avoid something that had been fired at him. The girls, unfortunately, were not as quick, and tumbled out of the air as a glowing green rope wrapped around them and caused Kara to groan painfully.

Kara and Donna crashed onto a nearby rooftop, with Donna orienting herself underneath the whimpering Kryptonian, and Peter immediately oriented himself to dive after them, when he had to spin through a complicated set of acrobatics as more projectiles flew his way.

 _What now?_ He thought to himself as he heard the roar of a helicopter and spotted several figures descending on ropes to surround the girls. He watched as they deployed canisters that released a strange blue smoke before moving in closer to Donna and Kara. A single whiff of the gas had Greg working to protect Peter's mind as he conveyed it made him docile and more subservient, and Peter sent a grateful thought to his friend as he dove right into the middle of the cloud.

"Spider-Man!" A voice called out from somewhere in the cloud. "Get down, now!"

"Oh, good," Peter quipped. "I've never been in a dance off before! For a second I thought we were in some sort of trouble." Dropping to the ground, he spun on his hands and kicked the nearest figures legs out from under them. A quick punch had them unconscious and Peter crouched over them, examining their heavy duty tactical armor as Greg lashed out at another soldier behind him with a tendril that erupted from his back. "So, is there a particular genre that we need to stick to?" He asked, firing webs at two soldiers and yanking away their guns while Greg created a tentacle that expanded into a flat shield just as gunfire rained down from above. "Because, I can boogie with the best of 'em, but my pop and lock could use some work."

"Freeze!" The voice from earlier shouted as the smoke began to clear. Standing above where Kara and Donna lay with vacant expressions on their faces was a woman in full combat gear, pointing her gun at his two friends. "Stand down, or I shoot!"

"Oh, I wouldn't do that," Peter warned her as he straightened himself and allowed the remaining soldiers to surround him.

"Spider-Man, you and your friends are coming with us."

"On whose authority?" Peter asked calmly, his mind racing as he tried to figure out a way to keep his two friends from getting shot now that these people all had a clean shot.

"The Department of Extranormal Operations," the woman replied. "These guns are all loaded with Kryptonite bullets, so I would think very carefully about how you want this to play out."

Peter swore under his breath. He had taken the time to research what was known about Kara and her cousin, and knew what that green hunk of rock could do to her. With Donna out of commission as well, he was going to have to play his cards very carefully. Sighing, he raised his hands in the air while Greg secretly activated the recorder in his pocket.

"I've never heard of a Department of Extranormal Operations," he said. "How do I know you're really with the government?"

"I don't have to prove anything to you when I have your friends at gunpoint," the woman replied and Peter narrowed his eyes angrily.

"Well, I guess you've got me there, Agent Grouchy-Pants," Peter conceded. "Take us to your leader."

A massive soldier stepped forward and wrenched his arms behind him, slapping a pair of heavy-duty manacles over his wrists while another pair grabbed the girls and roughly hauled them over their shoulders.

"Control, this is Agent Danvers," the angry woman who had been pointing a gun at Peter's friends said as she raised her wrist to her mouth. "Targets are neutralized. We are en route to the Hole."

"The Hole?" Peter asked as he was shoved towards a stealth chopper that lowered gently onto the rooftop. "That some sort of exclusive club? Because, if so, you might wanna talk to your PR manager."

"Shut up," Agent Danvers growled.

"But how else will we become besties, Agent Danvers?" Peter asked with mock innocence. "Communication is key for a healthy relationship."

"If you don't shut your mouth, I'm going to put a bullet in your friend's leg," Danvers snarled.

"Oh, she wouldn't like that," Peter murmured. "Is it normal operating procedure to threaten people you've unlawfully captured?"

"It is when they annoy me."

They were now seated inside the chopper with Kara and Donna laying at their feet. Every gun was pointed at him with the exception of Agent Danvers' who had hers trained squarely on the meat of Donna's thigh.

With the sound of the helicopter drowning out most noise, Peter had Greg turn off the recorder and kept his mouth shut as Danvers glared at him. They flew for well over an hour into the middle of a desert before finally coming to a landing in a nondescript patch of sand that looked the same as every other one they flew over until it opened up beneath them, revealing a hanger filled with sophisticated vehicles and people dressed in black combat uniforms running to and fro.

"Nice place you got here," Peter remarked, turning the recorder back on. They were walked through a maze of halls and elevators as they descended towards what he assumed was the heart of the base. He made sure to keep his head forward, but committed every little detail to memory. Eventually, the men carrying Kara and Donna split off from their group, and Peter turned to follow only to be stopped by Danvers and the rest of his armed entourage.

"Where are they taking them?" He demanded. He noticed Donna's eyes clearing as she shook her head slightly and nearly sighed with relief.

"That's none of your concern," Danvers said.

"Creepy government agency kidnaps me and my friends, and tries to make off with them who knows where deep beneath the desert outside National City?" Peter retorted. "I'd say I have every right to be concerned."

"You don't have the luxury of rights down here," Danvers said, and Peter was caught between outrage and vindictive glee as one of her henchmen stepped forward to punch him in the gut. Peter made sure to properly crumple into the blow and grunted as if he had actually been winded. He allowed himself to be dragged away in silence until they came upon a large room filled with computers and technicians scurrying about.

"By the looks of that surveillance equipment, I'm not the only one without rights," Peter remarked. "Cellphone surveillance, email phishing, camera hacking -"

"Minor concessions in the name of security." Peter was turned around, and saw a tall, older man descending a flight of stairs towards him. He was dressed smartly in military dress, with more than one star adorning his lapels, and regarded Peter as if he were something he had stepped in on the street.

"Security from what?" Peter asked.

"I would think that was obvious," the man retorted. "Security against freaks like you, who endanger the public."

"I'm sorry, G.I. Joe, I didn't realise that saving lives endangered the public."

The man stepped forward and socked Peter across the jaw, once again, he rolled with the hit, biding his time.

"My name is General Samuel Lane," the man said calmly. "You will address me as Sir, or General Lane."

"So formal," Peter quipped. "Are you sure you wouldn't prefer something nicer? Like, I dunno, Sammy, maybe?"

Lane once again punched him in the jaw, and Peter bent over to the side, taking advantage of his position to catch a glimpse of the DEO's networking station.

"That sense of humor won't last very long down here," Waller said.

"Why, bad crowd?" Peter asked.

"The Department of Extranormal Operations and other agencies across the United States has been dealing with freaks like you and those two girls for years," Waller explained. "Our job is to secure and contain inhuman threats such as yourself before the general public becomes aware of that."

"There's an Uncle Sam joke in here somewhere, but that's beneath me," Peter retorted, earning himself another punch to the gut from Agent Danvers. "Look, Sam, buddy, surely there's no need for this much aggressiveness. Why don't you take these handcuffs off, I'll give you and your friends a light decking in the schnozz, and we can be on our way."

"Son, you and your little girlfriends underestimate just how much trouble your in," Lane replied. "My job is to find freaks like you, secure and contain them, then I get to hand you over to our labs where we figure out what makes you tick. You're more than twenty stories underground in the middle of the California Desert. Not even the Justice League could save you. We have the best technology on the planet, and our agents are some of the most highly trained -"

"Uh, huh," Peter said distractedly, looking around the command center. "Neat. What kind of coolant do you guys use? This far underground, I was thinking maybe vents, but then thermal imaging would pick it up. Liquid, maybe?"

"Are you ignoring me?" Lane asked, frustration beginning to bleed into his voice.

"Sorry, you say something?" Peter replied, pretending to just now notice Lane standing in front of him. "Sorry, I get so bored when guys like you start self-fellating, I sometimes get distracted."

This seemed to finally get under Lane's skin as he reared back to deliver another punch into Peter's gut. This time, however, Peter clenched his abdominals just as the general's knuckles made contact, and there was a satisfying crunch followed by the general falling to the ground and hollering in pain as his wrist broke. At that moment, a deep rumbling made the ground shake, indicating Donna had finally seen her chance to strike as well. Chaos filled the command center as Peter easily broke his shackles and flipped over Agent Danvers, disarming her and hurling the gun into the nearest bank of computers. A pair of dark blurs soon appeared as Kara and Donna joined him, Kara having replaced her mask even as her eyes literally glowed with anger.

"Come on, we need to get out of here!" Peter shouted, punching another armed soldier in the face before ripping his helmet off his head. Kara looked like she was more set on causing as much destruction as she could, but Donna grabbed her arm and whispered something in her ear that made her take a deep breath and nod. The three of them continued to fight their back towards the hanger, with Peter making liberal use of his sticky fingers to acquire as much of their tech as he could carry. Kara didn't bother with any elevators on their way out of the facility, choosing instead to rocket through floor after floor, with Peter and Donna not far behind as the DEO scrambled to contain them.

After what felt like hours, the three of them entered the hanger, where Peter and Donna started causing as much damage to the surrounding aircrafts while Kara struggled to force open the heavy doors. Eventually, she managed to separate them by a few inches, and Peter adhered to the ceiling to lend a helping hand while Donna held off the DEO. Together, Peter and Kara forced open the doors just enough for them to squeeze through, and Peter yanked Donna - who was fighting with more and more brutality - after them with a quick web shot before Kara picked them both up and hurtled back towards the city.

They flew in silence for a long while, as Peter could tell that whatever Kara and Donna had seen inside that facility had disturbed them both greatly. It wasn't until they were just entering the city that Kara finally spoke, her voice quivering with barely restrained emotion.

"Peter."

"Yeah, Kara?"

"Do you think Kal knows about these people?"

"I don't know," Peter admitted. "They seemed to have a lot of Kryptonite, so it stands to reason that they aren't exactly on your cousin's side. If that's the case, then it wouldn't be a stretch to say that they've made efforts to hide from him."

Kara was silent for the rest of the flight. Peter could tell that both she and Donna weren't in the proper emotional state to help him fight crime, and resigned himself to letting the police handle things for that night. Instead, he ordered Kara to take them home, where the girls both disappeared into their rooms without a word, and left Peter to sit on the couch with a sigh, wondering what they could have seen as Greg morphed into his usual pyjamas and handed him the recorder on a thin tendril. Taking the device with a quick thanks, Peter grabbed his laptop and prepared himself for a night of work. Hopefully, the girls would feel somewhat better tomorrow, or, if not, they would at least be willing to talk to him about what they had seen. Judging by what General Lane had been talking about, it couldn't have been pretty.

 **A/N: I know this took a while to come out, but I started writing this while on break from school, so I had a ton of free time. Now that it's back up, the updates are, sadly, going to have to slow down. That aside, hopefully, you guys liked this one, and are okay with the names I gave Kara and Donna. I know that there are some of you who are going to think that their escape from the DEO was too easy, but I figured that between the three of them being complete unknowns before they entered the scene, the fact that they are dressed in almost regular street clothes, and that none of them appear to really use any gadgets to the public, the DEO would be a little overconfident in their capture. They assumed that the kryptonite and gas would work on the girls, but didn't account for Donna actually being an Amazon, as opposed to an alien or something. Same goes for Peter.**

 **Anyway, we've now, officially met Zatanna, as well as Agent Danvers and the DEO, so things will be starting to pick up speed as our heroes stumble across even more nefarious plots and work hard to keep the people of National City safe.**


	10. Chapter 10

"Very well, Captain, I'll be sure to remember this little conversation the next time one of your officers shoots an unarmed child. Have a good day."

Cat Grant barely restrained herself from slamming the phone, and huffed angrily as she reclined in the high-backed chair behind her desk, looking out the window at the grey sky of the approaching dawn. Once again, the police refused to comment on the nightly bedlam that was the Southside of National City. She had taken the story from her reporters when all five of them working the story came back with little more than refusals to even broach the subject that ranged from hostile, to terrified. She couldn't understand it. Every night, the southern half of the city turned into little more than a war zone, only to break up at first light. On top of that, virtually everyone who lived in the northern half was ignorant to the madness and treated any news from there with the same feigned sympathy and momentary interest that they did with stories coming out of third-world and developing countries.

So far, the only people who seemed to be making any sort of headway were the three new superheroes who had suddenly appeared one night, and, while Cat was always happy to nab a new story, and had already declared naming rights for Shield-Maiden and Valkyrie, she was far from pleased with how little information there was on them.

In spite of the lack of information regarding the two superheroines and their male counterpart, Cat hadn't gotten to where she was without having a mind for deductive reasoning, and, while she was unwilling to put her thoughts into print without proper sources to confirm them, there were a few things that she had managed to put together.

The first was that, between the three of them, this Spider-Man character clearly had the most experience. He was the one who handled most of the fighting when it came to dangerous criminals, even though both Valkyrie and Shield-Maiden had shown to have superhuman abilities as well. At first, she had wondered if, perhaps, this was just another example of male chauvinism, but as more and more footage of the three of them came to light, it became obvious to Cat that he was doing the lion's share of the actual fighting not out some misguided attempt to protect the women who worked with him, but, instead, to protect the criminals they were fighting. All three of them had displayed feats of strength that showed they were more than capable of killing someone in a more ways than Cat was comfortable thinking about, however, as she examined cellphone footage of the three of them, and went to the scenes of their appearances herself under the light of day, she was reminded of when Superman had made his first appearances more than two years prior.

The Man of Steel had taken a while to properly limit his seemingly limitless strength so that he caused the least amount of collateral damage while fighting crime or stopping disasters. Similarly, there was clear evidence in the cracked pavement and crumpled poles that, when lined up with the footage of the trio's actions, implied both women were still developing their self-control. Where the worst injury Spider-Man had allegedly caused was a broken leg along with a pair of ribs, were Shield-Maiden or Valkyrie to participate in the nightly brawls, Cat had a feeling that, quite by accident on their parts, there would be casualties.

The other clue as to Spider-Man's greater experience was his title itself. Not only had he been the only one of the three to have all ready had a title for himself, but he even had a preference for how it was spelled - demonstrated by the fact that he would leave humorous little notes at some of his crime scenes with the hyphen circled with several arrows pointing at it. Why then, was there absolutely nothing on him anywhere she looked? And why were he and his partners dressed so casually as they fought crime? Every member of the Justice League had a uniform that they wore when fighting that was as iconic as it was unique to each of them; when Spidey and his gal pals had first come on the scene, however, they had worn little more than rags with scarves covering their faces. Since then, they had upgraded slightly, but, with the exception of their masks, it was still more than obvious that they were wearing little more than regular clothes that had been customized by hand.

For the first time, Cat found herself thinking hard about the finances behind working as a superhero, and the efforts it would take to conceal them, but set them aside as she heard someone clearing their throat awkwardly from just over her shoulder. Gasping fearfully, she leapt to her feet and turned around only to find herself face-to-mask with Spider-Man himself as hung upside down from her ceiling by a thin strand of webbing.

"So, I was gonna talk to you once you got off the phone," he said sheepishly, scratching the back of his neck. "But that call didn't sound like it went all that well, and you seemed like you needed some time to collect yourself."

"And why did you choose now, of all times, to disturb me," Cat demanded, crossing her arms. "When I'm deep in thought?"

Spider-Man shrugged. "Got bored, mostly. Also didn't wanna be here when your employees started to arrive." He trailed off as he looked around at the glass walls surrounding Cat's office. "How can you work in here? Don't you fell, I duno, exposed?"

Cat smirked and returned to her seat, spinning in place to face Spider-Man as she regained her confident demeanor before replying. "They're my employees, working in my building, for my company. I'm not exposed to them, they're exposed to me."

"Well… yeah," Spider-Man agreed as if she had just told him the sky was blue. "That's how windows work."

Cat scowled as he didn't seem particularly intimidated by her and refrained herself from crossing her arms. "What are you doing here, Spider-Man? You do realize this is private property, correct?"

"Wait, really?" Spider-Man asked in mock panic. "Oh, man, I could have sworn I was headed for the park."

"If you simply came here to make poor attempts at cracking wise, I'm going to have to call the police," Cat warned.

Spider-Man laughed. "Like they don't already have it out for me." Shaking his head, he seemed to regain his focus as his large, white eyepieces focussed on her eyes. "I know you've been looking into me and my friends."

Cat raised an eyebrow, unimpressed. "Should I give you an award for your excellent detective work? I'm a reporter first and a CEO second. Someone like you and your friends come along, and I'm going to hunt down the story behind it."

"I know," Spider-Man replied. "I've read your work. That's why you were the first person I thought of when I got this." He reached into the pocket of his dark, leather jacket and pulled out a tiny flash drive. He tossed it to Cat, who opened a drawer in her desk and pulled out the second laptop she used for looking into files that had the risk infecting her computer. Plugging it in, she found an audio file and selected it, sitting up as Spider-Man's voice played through her speakers.

" _I've never heard of a Department of Extranormal Operations. How do I know you're really with the government?"_

" _I don't have to prove anything to you when I've got your friends at gunpoint."_

Cat was caught between righteous anger at the thought of some secret government agency ambushing and trying to kidnap three people who had done little other than save lives since they first appeared, and predatory glee as she not only saw her next Pulitzer prize, but an opportunity to strike fear-mongers and bigots like Samuel Lane at the heart of their corruption. She listened to the recording two full times before closing it and turning back to Spider-Man.

"If you think this will make me stop reporting on you and your friends, you're sorely mistaken."

"I didn't expect you to," Spider-Man replied. "In fact, I read the way you criticized Superman, and later the Justice League when they were first starting out, and I welcome that sort of journalism. You held them accountable for their mistakes without detracting from the good they did."

"So, what are you expecting?" Cat asked. There was no way that a story this good would fall into her lap without at least a few strings attached.

"Like I said, I've seen your work. I know that you're dedicated to spreading the truth and using your words and influence to help people." Cat restrained a wide grin. It was turning out that Spider-Man was one of those goody two-shoes that would do what they thought was the right thing for no other reason than it was the right thing. "I also know that you're ruthless, arrogant, selfish, and will take any opportunity that presents itself to advance yourself and your company that presents itself. So, in exchange for that story, you have to agree not to report anything about me or my friends that endangers who we are beneath our masks."

"And why would I do that?" Cat snarled, her good mood evaporating into venomous defensiveness. "I already know what I'm looking for now, thanks to this recording of yours. You take it, I'll just find other sources."

"Because, if people find out who is beneath this mask, it puts me and those closest to me in danger. More importantly, for you at least, your stock prices and earnings have been soaring since my friends and I got here. You reveal who we are, you not only face the backlash from those who actually care understand why we wear masks, but also, when we inevitably either kick the bucket, are arrested, or get abducted and thrown in some shady government lab, you'll be the one people will blame. Sure, you might get a handful of fantastic weeks when the story breaks, but then it'll be back to business as usual." He paused, and Cat took a moment to think over what he was saying, reluctantly agreeing with him before he continued. "My friends and I continue doing what we do, however, and you have not one, but three superheroes that you can make money off of."

Cat took a couple minutes to think over his deal, weighing the pros and cons, before sighing. "All right, Spider-Man, you have a deal."

"Great!" Spider-Man exclaimed happily. "I look forward to reading more of your work, Miss Grant." He dropped from the ceiling and was out over her balcony in an instant, disappearing into the city as he swung away. Cat watched him for a moment before turning back to her laptop and reaching for her phone.

"Hello, this is Cat Grant. I have some questions, if you don't mind."

*(OoO)*

Adjusting to life on Earth had not been easy for Kara. Everything was so new to her, and she constantly found herself longing for the comforting sight of the crystal spires that rose from Krypton's few remaining cities. When she had first departed her home, she comforted herself with the knowledge that she had a duty: protect her cousin and raise him into the man his parents hoped for. It seemed that was not to be, however, and by the time she landed, the baby boy she remembered helping take care of had grown into a man, and risen beyond even that. He no longer needed her, and did not seem as prepared to be there for her as she had been for him.

He was not unkind when they spoke with one another, but it was also clear that he was very much out of his depth in regards to her. They may have originated from the same planet, and even the same family, but the more Kara spoke to him, the more she learned that, beneath the sigil of the Noble House of El that he wore so proudly, beneath his alien physiology that made him nearer to a god than a man, he was a human. He didn't understand why she would give silent thanks for drink but not food, because he hadn't been taught about the Great Droughts that plagued Krypton in its final years. He didn't believe in Rao, the bringer of life, and instead worshipped one of the many human gods. Worse still, he seemed unwilling to learn about the history and customs of his people, blatantly ignoring the eons of bloodshed that supported their fair utopia, the hysterical xenophobia that gripped them tighter and tighter every year as resources became scarce, the riots that would break out in the streets.

The only thing they did seem to find common ground on was her burgeoning powers, and her need to control them. He told her about how he learned to focus on only what he wanted and to drown out the rest, but, even then, never taught her how, as he would always disappear in a blur to go stop some disaster or another.

Where she lost her cousin, though, she gained a friend. Peter was also a stranger to this planet, being from another universe entirely, and regularly taught her about the customs of Earth before eagerly listening to her stories about Krypton. He was the one who stood by her every second when she was lost and scared, and refused even to leave her side when she was to be sent to an island filled with women who would dislike him for simply being born male.

He was her first anchor. His eyes were what she would focus on when she started being able to see through everything but the densest of materials, his scent was what she memorized when it felt like her nose was filled with acid as a million different smells competed for her attention, his heartbeat was the one she would find when the sounds around her threatened to drive her insane. It was the one she was always aware of, and would still focus on when she needed to calm herself until Donna came along.

Donna was her first friend on Earth that had approached her for nothing more than friendship. Peter had stumbled across her and made a vow to protect and help her, and their friendship grew from there, but Donna simply wanted someone to be close to. They shared secrets, lived together, trained together, and now fought crime together. Where Peter was calm and analytical, Donna was headstrong and stubborn. They both deferred to him and his experience when it came to helping others, but once she had been given a task, Donna rarely let anything get in the way of her completing it. They both felt that they were overshadowed by their family, and supported each other in their desires to become their own people. She was Kara's second anchor.

It was because of her hyper-awareness of both Peter and Donna's heartbeats, that Kara knew someone had infiltrated the little apartment they called home. She was sitting on the couch, Peter's head in her lap as he slept, eating her fifth bowl of cereal and watching a documentary on his laptop about strange flightless birds that marched when she heard a second appear in Donna's room.

Peter must have sensed the intrusion as well, as his eyes snapped open and Greg, his strange living clothing, morphed into the form-fitting, lightly armored suit he wore when they first met as they both sprinted for Donna's room, slamming open the door to find a familiar woman in plate armor standing over her.

"Leave her alone!" Kara screamed, using her speed to knock Diana out the open window, while Peter followed. This had woken Donna up and she quickly dressed herself and climbed out the window, swinging herself up to the roof with ease to join them.

"Diana?" She asked. "What are you doing here?"

"I'm here to take you home," Wonder Woman replied.

"By kidnapping her?!" Kara shouted angrily.

"Did mother send you?" Donna demanded.

"She did inform me you had run away," Diana agreed. "Man's world is not the place for you, Donna. You belong at home."

"I belong with my friends!" Donna yelled, her voice cracking. She knew that if her sister wanted to, there was nothing she could do to stop Diana from literally picking her up and carrying her back to Themyscira. It was strange to no longer think of the place she had spent the last several decades as home, but she couldn't deny that any place where she would be forcibly separated from these two people who had already become so dear to her would never feel like anything other than a prison.

"Let's make this perfectly clear," Peter said quietly. Outwardly, he seemed completely calm. Not a single muscle so much as twitched as he glared at Diana through his menacing green lenses. Yet somehow, Donna could tell that he was brimming with anger. He took a deep breath and exhaled, and Donna's nose burned strangely. "So long as they allow it, _nothing_ is going to come between me and my friends." As he took one slow step towards Diana after another, Kara joined him, her flaring nostrils telling Donna - who was routed in place - that she too could feel the strange burning. Diana looked between the three of them as Peter seemed to grow taller, his shoulders broadening with every step.

His fingers started to sharpen, and soon glowing green claws were sprouting from the tip of each as small bumps rose along his spine.

"Stand down, boy," Diana warned him, reaching for the pommel of her sword. "I am taking my sister home, even if I have to go through you."

"Then you'll have through me, too," Kara said firmly stopping next to Peter.

"And don't think I won't resist as well," Donna added. Her chest felt constricted with affection for her two friends that were willing to fight her sister - Wonder Woman, the most powerful warrior in the world, second only to Superman himself in terms of strength and speed - just so that she could have a choice about what she wanted to do with her life.

Diana looked between the three of them critically, and Donna's eyes stung at the thought that her _sister,_ the woman who had saved her from the streets so many years ago and gave her a new family among the amazons, would actually consider hurting her and her friends just so that she could bring Donna back.

"Stop and think, Diana," Peter ordered, his voice warbling strangely as he glared down at Diana. "A member of the Justice League and the Ambassador of the Amazons fighting two of the three people who have done nothing but help National City in an attempt to kidnap what most people assume to be a private citizen."

"Are you threatening me?" Diana snarled.

"No," Peter replied stepping forward so he was chest to chest with Diana and staring down into her eyes, having somehow grown about six inches over the course of the tense confrontation. "I'm blackmailing you. You or any other members of the League try to do anything to Kara or Donna without their explicit consent, and the first call I'll make is to every news outlet that will listen," Peter continued.

"You wouldn't," Diana murmured.

"I'm sure Cat Grant will love to handle the story of a foreign national coming onto American soil and kidnapping a young woman. I will dedicate everything I am to convincing the world that the Amazon people are little more than a superpowered cult that kidnap girls and brainwash them into hating everything to do with men."

Silence covered the rooftop, stifling them as the tension rose exponentially as Diana and Peter stared at each other. Minutes passed without so much as a twitch between the four of them, before, finally, Diana snarled and turned away.

"You'll regret making an enemy of me, boy," she growled. Her attention turned to Donna, her expression softened somewhat, replacing some of her anger with disappointment. "Sister, I hope you realize where your true home is. Before it's too late." Without another word, she flew off, and Donna felt tears start to stream down her cheeks as she watched Diana shrink into nothing on the horizon.

She continued to stare into the empty sky, her heartbeat in her ears until a pair of soft arms wrapped around her waist from behind, while another pair of hands reached up to wipe the tears from her cheek. Breaking from her stupor, she looked up and found herself lost in his eyes. They were considerably darker than she was used to, like the patted earth of a freshly filled grave. Ghosts roamed in his gaze as he leaned forward, the burning smell abating as he rested his forehead against her own.

"I'm sorry I threatened your sister," he whispered, and she could hear the remorse in his voice. "I didn't mean to lose it like that."

Donna smiled and reached up to cup his cheek while Kara tightened her grip, pressing her warmth against Donna's back.

"There's nothing to forgive," she replied.

The three of them stood there for another minute, soaking up the comfort from one another beneath the morning sun. It was a soft chirping that finally brought them back to reality. They all separated and Peter reached into the pocket of his reformed jeans and pulled out the scrap communicator.

" _Spider-Man? It's Zatanna."_

 **A/N: Once again, not a whole lot as far as plot development goes, but I try to limit my chapter size to between three and four thousand words, so there are occasions where there's only one or two scenes that take place. That being said, hopefully I captured Cat's... cattiness well. She was actually fairly amusing to write, as I'm always a fan of assholes with hearts of gold. We also see how Peter's not only become more jaded during his encounter with Cat, but how the losses he suffered in his universe continue to affect him and are channeled into the fierce protectiveness he feels towards those he considers friends and hostility towards those he perceives as threats to them. The confrontation with WW was actually fairly challenging to write, as I'm trying to show that she and the rest of the League** ** _are_** **good people, but their not infallible. The first three drafts of that section actually had both WW and SM being far more aggressive with each other, and one version even had them actually coming to blows, but I felt that was way to rapid of escalation for this point in the story. At the moment, both Diana and Kal see Kara and Donna more as rebellious teenagers (which they kind of are) who are hanging around with the bad boy just to spite people.**

 **Anyway, we'll be back with Zatanna next chapter, as she gets properly introduced to Peter and the girls, and gives us some insight as to why, exactly, she's with Haly's Circus.**


	11. Chapter 11

Peter, Donna, and Kara were waiting in an alley between a little deli near the train tracks and a condemned three-storey edifice that could barely be called a building. There was at least one hole in the wall on all four sides, and Peter could see that the floor had collapsed in one of the rooms on the third floor.

"There are people in there," Kara muttered, aghast as she scanned through the walls. "They're just lying there, staring at the walls, surrounded by needles."

"Should we do something?" Donna asked.

Peter sighed as he looked up and down the street for Zatanna. "We are doing it."

Kara turned away from the grim sight and floated over to him. "What do you mean?" She asked quietly.

"These people need help," he explained. "But not only do they most likely not want it, the kind of help they need is something none of us are capable of giving them. You can't punch addiction. The best you can do is go after the suppliers so that no one else can fall victim to it."

"So we just leave them?" Donna sounded incredulous.

"They're safe, relatively speaking, for the moment," Peter replied. "And they aren't endangering anyone but themselves. Normally, I'd leave a tip with the police, but we haven't been here long enough for me to know that someone will get these people help instead of just throwing them in jail."

He got a feeling that neither of them were very happy with that conclusion, but that was fine. He wasn't either. Instead he swiveled his head up and down the street once more, finally spotting her. With a couple quick hand movements, the conversation was cut off and Peter grabbed Donna as Kara scooped Zatanna off the ground in a blur. To her credit, Zatanna only let out a brief shriek of surprise before controlling herself as Kara reassured her that they were just going somewhere more secure. Within minutes, they had returned to their apartment, which was the only place Peter had managed to cobble together any sort of signal jammers that would also remain inconspicuous out of several old microwave ovens and four walkie-talkies he had bought with their limited funds. When hooked up, the four radios created a circle of interference just big enough for one room, that way, they could gather and speak unhindered while eavesdroppers remained, for the most part, unaware.

"You know," Zatanna remarked as they gathered in Donna's room and took off their uniforms. "This is all very progressive of you, and hot damn if I'm not interested, but normally, I like to get dinner before we start taking our clothes off."

Peter chuckled awkwardly as Greg simply changed the design on his jacket and made his mask recede, feeling his face warm up as he sat down on the bed next to Zatanna and joined her in staring at Donna and Kara.

"Forgive us if we want to be comfortable in our own home," Donna replied, undaunted, smirking as she decided to change shirts as well - despite their costumes really being little more than reinforced jackets - and made a show of squirming to get out of it, making her abs bunch and roll in ways that had Peter valiantly reciting the periodic table in his head.

"So, not that I don't enjoy a little striptease every now and then," Zatanna said. "But why, exactly, am I here?"

"Consider it a gesture of good will," Peter replied. "I know how hard it can be to trust someone you've just met. Especially when their people like us. So, we thought that speaking with you face-to-face would help show that we're putting our trust in you as well."

"Pretty big leap of faith you're taking there," she pointed out.

"Not really," Kara replied sweetly. "I can throw you into space."

"Right," Zatanna said slowly, growing somber as she looked between the three of them before studying the ground intently. "I guess I should start at the beginning."

"It's as good a place as any," Peter said softly.

"My father was one of the greatest magicians in the world. He played stages all over the world, amazing crowds with his illusions." She smiled wistfully, staring off into the past. "I remember telling him that one day I would be an even better magician than him. He just laughed, pinned my hair up with a rose that he pulled out of thin air, and told me that the way I made him happier than he had been the day before was a greater piece of magic than anything he could ever do.

"Not long after that, he disappeared. No one had any inclination as to what might have happened or where he might have gone. One day everything was completely normal, and the next, he was gone without a trace."

"That's terrible," Donna said softly, while Kara hopped on the bed next to Zatanna and wrapped her arms around her shoulders. Peter said nothing, but reached over and wrapped her tightly clenched hands in his own, squeezing softly.

"For years, I looked desperately for him, but there's not much a thirteen year old girl can do on her own. Eventually I gave up and started doing small-time gigs as a magician myself. I figured if I couldn't find him, I would at least honour him by continuing what we both loved. But, last year on my seventeenth birthday, I started noticing strange things happening all around me. Stuff would move on its own, things would randomly catch fire, real _Paranormal Activity_ kind of stuff." She paused and took a deep breath. "It turns out, magic, like honest-to-God, where-is-my-Hogwarts-letter _magic_ is real. Both my dad and I could do it. I spent the next year with a… mentor, teaching me how to control it, until, one day, about two months ago, I get an envelope. There's nothing written on it, but I could sense a faint magical signature. Inside, was a picture of my father, time-stamped a month after he disappeared, and a ticket to Haly's Circus. I tracked him down, and it turned out that my dad used to perform with Haly. He explained that my dad would go out at every stop, disappearing for a long time before coming back in time for the show."

"So you joined up to see if you could pick up the trail?" Peter asked quietly.

Zatanna nodded, sniffling to herself before continuing. "I had barely been there two week when Mateo and his gang showed up. I got myself ready to wipe the floor with them, but all Mateo did was hold up this," she pointed at the large purple amulet clasped around her neck with a thick, gold chain, "and my powers started to fail, letting them get the drop on me. They held me down and wrapped it around my neck. As soon as it clicked shut, it felt like a part of me was missing. Like when you lose feeling in your arm. My magic was completely sealed off."

"Is there any way to get it off?" Kara asked, examining the necklace closely.

"The necklace stops me from telling you if there is," Zatanna said defeatedly. "Only the one who created it can, and I don't even know who that is."

"I wouldn't be so sure," Peter replied, narrowing his eyes.

"Only the one who created it can remove the necklace?" Zatanna asked, scowling as she snapped her mouth shut with a click.

"So, it's forcing you to say those words as well," Peter deduced.

"Only the one -" Zatanna grunted as she forced her mouth closed once more.

"Clearly it's not going to allow you to discuss it with us," Peter said. "So, why don't we get back on task: what do you know about Mateo and his operation?"

"For one thing, it's not Mateo's operation," Zatanna elaborated. "The man is a cruel, sadistic sack of shit, but he's nothing more than rabid dog. Whoever's threatening Haly is smart. Mateo is the only one that would have even an inkling of what the bigger picture is, and he's not the most stable of individuals."

"That's an understatement," Peter mumbled. "He strikes me as the kind of guy only interested in killing, screwing, and making money."

"If only we had Diana's lasso," Donna moaned.

"Then we could just force him to talk," Kara finished.

"I think robbing Wonder Woman is going a little far to accomplish our goal," Peter replied, smiling when Donna groaned and threw her hands in the air as she leaned back, pouting at the ceiling. "That being said, I think I have an idea."

*(OoO)*

" _Senor_ Haly!" Mateo shouted as he exited his black SUV. The circus was packing up, getting ready to head out to the next city, but they all froze once he and his men had shown up. He grinned maliciously as his underlings stormed through the camp, gathering the circus performers in the center and holding them at gunpoint before spreading out.

"What is the meaning of this?!" Haly demanded as he was thrown out of his office near the head of the train. He had taken off his vermillion ringmaster's jacket and undone the top three buttons of his shirt as he worked. The crisp, white fabric was now stained with dirt and blood as he struggled to stand, only to be viciously whacked in the jaw by one of the thugs with the butt of his gun. Screams rang through the gathered performers as Mateo sauntered over and lifted Haly by his thinning hair.

"Jack," Mateo said softly, shaking his head in disappointment. "Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack. I thought we had a good thing going on here. A nice little… symbiotic relationship. Me, the mighty rhinoceros, going about doing… whatever the hell a rhino does, and you, that bitchy little bird living on my back, eating bugs and shit."

"What do you want, Mateo?" Haly demanded.

"This last month really made me think we had a deal, Haly: you help me move my product, and I help you pay off your debts. But now, my men have been getting picked up by the _policia_ almost as fast as we can get them."

"I have no idea -"

"You know," Mateo snarled, backhanding Haly to the ground and punctuating each word with a kick to the ribs. "I. Really. Hate. Being. Interrupted."

"Leave him alone!" Zatanna screamed, stepping out from where she was hiding near the pile of fabric and poles that once was the big top.

Mateo's grin returned as he looked Zatanna over. She was still dressed in the tuxedo and fishnets she wore when performing, showing off her long legs.

"Aw, Zatanna, did you dress up just for me?" He asked lecherously as he left Haly lying in the dirt and stalked over to her, running the tip of his pistol down her cheek.

"Get away from me," Zatanna snarled, slapping his hand away.

Mateo scowled and got nose-to-nose with her. "What about you, _Hermosa?_ Do you know why my guys keep getting taken down this last week? Maybe that little collar of yours is getting itchy, eh?"

"Maybe your guys are just idiots?" Zatanna countered. Staring into Mateo's eyes, she watched through her periphery as the circle of thugs were quietly taken down by threads of emerald green webbing and a pair of black and green blurs.

Mateo growled and raised his hand to smack her with his gun, only for a gloved hand to grab him by the wrist.

"Don't you know it's rude to hit a lady?" Spider-Man asked. Behind him stood Shield-Maiden and Valkyrie while his grunts lay groaning on the ground as Haly led his group onto the train.

"You're messing with the wrong people, _Hermano,"_ he warned as Spider-Man released him.

"Is that so?" Spider-Man replied, releasing his wrist. "Because I told my friends you were definitely the kind of thugs that gave us gold stars when we caught you." Mateo opened his mouth to respond, but was interrupted when Zatanna took the opportunity to kick him in the head while his attention was elsewhere.

"Is it over?" Haly asked as he stepped off the train to join them.

"For the moment," Peter said. "Thanks for your cooperation over this last week, Mr. Haly. I'm sorry they took it out on you."

Haly smiled and waved it off. "Not to worry, my boy. It was my weakness that got my family caught up in all this, I'd take more than a few licks from a nutcase like him to protect them."

"You should probably get going before anyone wakes up," Zatanna suggested. "The sooner you kick off your European tour, the sooner you can get away from these people."

Haly nodded and smiled sadly as he wrapped Zatanna in a warm embrace. "Thank you for helping us Zatanna. I'm sorry I couldn't be of more help in your search for Giovanni."

"I had a lot of fun performing with you Mr. Haly," Zatanna mumbled sadly. "I hope the rest of your tour goes well."

Peter, Donna, and Kara stepped aside to allow Zatanna some space as she said her farewells to the rest of the circus, and watched as the train started up and chugged away, leaving several barrels of the drug Mateo and his goons were trying to move. Eventually, she joined them, her eyes red-rimmed as she accepted a hug from Kara and they left the scene as Peter webbed up Mateo and the rest of his goons before calling in a tip to the police.

He landed just in time to watch as Kara wriggled her fingers between Zatanna's neck and the gold chain around it before focusing on the gold clasp until thin lines of red heat started emitting from her pupils. The clasp melted within moments and she quickly ripped it away as Zatanna hissed from the heat. She threw it to the ground, and Donna crushed the amulet with one of her shields.

"I still can't believe you only needed a week to figure out how to get this thing off me," Zatanna remarked as she rubbed her neck.

"In my experiences with magic, the simplest answer usually turns out to be the right one," Peter replied. "Whoever made that thing spent so long making sure there was no magical way of taking it off, and carved all those runes into it, that he forgot about the mundane."

"I don't think anything about us qualifies as mundane," Kara noted, somewhat winded.

"Good point," Peter conceded. "I guess what I mean is that he forgot to account for the clasp being the weakest point, and Kryptonians having super strength and heat-vision."

The four of them watched as police cars arrived at the train tracks and picked up Mateo and his goons along with the barrels of chemicals.

"So, now we just have to wait?" Zatanna asked.

"That's right," Peter replied. "There's a piece of Greg stuck to Mateo with a tracker. I made sure to make my tip sound like we just stumbled across him and his operation, and left the chemicals somewhat hidden, so that the police will be the ones to find out about them. It's almost inevitable that Mateo, at least, will get off scot free, so now we can track him back to his boss and see who exactly they are. In the meantime, though, this gets a handful of dangerous criminals off the streets and keeps a new designer drug from leaving the city."

"It's too bad we can't see what's going on in the police department," Donna remarked. "It would be nice to know who we can trust."

"We're running low on funds as it is," Peter explained. "There's only so much I can do with recycled garbage without attracting attention. I don't want to risk another trip to Gotham until I absolutely have to."

"Besides, we already know we can trust each other," Kara added. "That's way better than doing anything alone."

Peter smiled and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. "In the meantime, the sun will be rising soon. We should get back home and get some rest."

Kara and Donna nodded, the former taking to the air, while Donna grinned beneath her mask and ran towards the edge of the roof after her before aiming one of her shields at the ground and squeezing a trigger hidden in her glove, causing the tip to fire into the rooftop and propel her into the air while she fired the other to the nearest surface, reeling in the first and continuing to run. Peter had finally gotten around to upgrading her shields to fire grappling hooks similar to what the Black Cat had used in his universe. Rather than swing from building to building like him, though, she used them in conjunction with her enhanced speed and reflexes to free run across rooftops, easily keeping pace with him and Kara, who would occasionally join her for the fun of it.

Peter watched them go with a smile on his face before holding his hand out to Zatanna.

"Oh," Zatanna said awkwardly. "I… can just find a motel or something. I wouldn't want to impose on you three."

"You're not," Peter replied, grabbing her around the waist and leaping off the rooftop to follow after the others. "Besides, I'm pretty sure those two would kill me if I left you to go off on your own."

"Oh, well, if it's to protect you," Zatanna reasoned, a smile teasing her lips for the first time in longer than she cared to remember. "I guess I can crash with you."

*(OoO)*

 _Kara watched impotently as Peter was led away from her and Donna, and they were carried past row after row of transparent boxes containing more aliens than she had ever seen. Some were like her, human in shape, but many of the others varied wildly in size and shape. The only thing they all had in common was the dead looks in their eyes, and their frightened body language as they tried to stay as far away from the guards as possible. Many of them were missing limbs, or were covered in scars, and, through the fog shrouding her mind, Kara's heart sobbed at the obvious injustice of it. Eventually, her and Donna were roughly thrown into a cell where a small bundle of rags huddled in the corner. The figure had long, disheveled hair that was almost the same shade of red as the cape Kal wore, and Kara could have sworn she saw a hint of gnarled, brown flesh as the bundle shifted._

" _The General sends his regards, Doctor," one of the guards sneered. "He thought you deserved some company as a reward for how well your… contributions… have helped subdue our prisoners."_

 _Kara's sadness turned to rage as the bundle shifted once more to reveal itself as a woman. She was looked as if she used to be the image of beauty, with high cheekbones, a thin nose, and eyes of the deepest green Kara had ever seen. However, her skin had the appearance of aged, rotten wood, and her crimson tresses hung limply around her face as she stared at them. The only sign of life in her gaze being the crushing fear consuming her soul. There were scars all over her body, and her clothes were little more than strips of fabric._

" _Help… me…" the woman whimpered, her voice like the snapping of dead twigs._

Kara woke with a scream, desperately looking around for the woman before her door shot open and Peter was sitting next to her, holding her tightly. She didn't even realise when she started sobbing, but once she did, she couldn't stop.

"It's okay," Peter whispered in her ear, stroking her hair comfortingly. "It was just a dream."

Except that was the problem. It wasn't.

 **A/N: And there we go. The immediate problem of Mateo and the stolen chemicals has been solved, and while I thought getting rid of the necklace was a little underwhelming, it seemed like the most logical conclusion; whoever enchanted it probably wasn't considering Zatanna having a genius, an Amazon, and a Kryptonian willing to help. The same goes for taking down Mateo. Not only is this nowhere near the last we'll be seeing of him, but, behind the sadistic cruelty, he** ** _is_** **just a guy. Peter played him, and he, Kara, and Donna had no trouble taking him and his men down. The only obstacle was the hostages, which is why Zatanna and Haly distracted him. I figured the grappling hooks made the most sense when it came to giving Donna a way to get around independently, as well as her choice not to emulate Peter by using them more to assist with doing superhuman parkour. Lastly, we're getting a glimpse of what Kara saw at the DEO that sent her into such a rage, and this will be the catalyst for the next arc as they try to figure out what to do about them.**


	12. Chapter 12

Peter had finally caved and had asked Kara to fly him to Metropolis, where they paid a visit to the _Utopia_ casino. Peter had spent the admittedly leisurely flight above the clouds trying to explain why counting cards was considered cheating, and not an applicable skill before they landed in an alleyway and Greg once again morphed into a fine three-piece suit. Kara spent her time watching him through the walls from a nearby rooftop as he balanced his winnings with enough losses to make the transition from three thousand dollars to,so far, fifteen thousand look organic. Eventually, she noticed that people were starting to watch him, but ended up being distracted by a familiar deep voice from behind her.

"Kara?" Kal asked.

"Kal!" Kara squeaked, springing ten feet in the air as she whirled around to face her cousin. "What are you doing here?"

Kal raised an eyebrow and crossed his arms over his broad chest. "I live here," he deadpanned. "The better question is what are _you_ doing here?"

"I-I-I know that!" Kara stuttered. "I-I-I'm just here, you know, uh… sightseeing!"

"Sightseeing?" Kal asked flatly.

"Y-yeah!" Kara was panicking. She had a strong feeling that her cousin wouldn't approve of Peter's method of making money, and was trying to figure out a way to distract him, before Peter -

"Alright, Kara, I think this should last us for a while." Kara wished invisibility was one of her superpowers as Peter strolled up the side of the building and onto the rooftop beside her, Greg having morphed back into his normal attire for when he went out as Spider-Man, and casually juggling two rolls of bills in one hand while the other was stuck in his pocket. He froze when he saw Kal, and his smile became forced.

"Supes," he greeted casually, pocketing the money and waving. "I should have expected to run into you. How's it going?"

"And I should have expected you to be the one to drag Kara here," Kal said flatly. "What are you doing here?"

"Well now, the fact that you're first assumption wasn't that Kara wanted to come see you is a little telling, doncha think?" Peter replied jovially.

"Kara knows she can come visit whenever she wants," Kal retorted. "That wouldn't involve you coming along, or carrying two rolls of cash in your pockets. What have you gotten her involved in?"

"Nothing!" Kara protested. "I just flew him here, and I volunteered!"

"Kara, people don't make that much money in one night through legitimate means," Kal said, as if he was explaining it to a child.

"I'm pretty sure Batman makes this much in, like, five minutes," Peter pointed out.

"But he doesn't receive his funds in rolls of bills," Kal replied before turning back to Kara. "Kara, I don't know what he's told you he's doing, but it can't be good."

"There's nothing illegal about enjoying some time at a casino," Peter countered.

"So you cheated," Kal growled.

"You don't know that," Peter replied. "For all you know, I just had a really good night."

Kal landed and took a threatening step towards him. Peter didn't back down, and stared him in the eye until Kara flew between them and stared at him imploringly.

"It's not worth it," she murmured.

Peter broke away from staring at Kal to look at her and smiled. "You're right," he said softly. "Let's go home."

Kara nodded and ignored Kal as she wrapped her arms around Peter and blasted off into the night sky.

In the week since Mateo's arrest, Peter used his newly acquired funds to quietly rent out the other four apartments on his floor. With some extra cash under the table, the landlord was willing to look the other way as they basically claimed the top floor of the rundown building for themselves and set about renovating it. Between three superhumans and Zatanna's magic, they were able to knock down the walls between three of the apartments to make one large studio for them all to live in, and turn the other two into a workshop and training room. It wasn't exactly inconspicuous, but Zatanna had at least managed to put up some rudimentary wards that would allow them to live and operate out of there in relative peace.

"So, you're saying humans _choose_ to do this?" Kara asked nervously.

"Yes, Kara," Zatanna said patiently.

"Of their own free will?"

"Yup," Peter replied, grinning.

Kara gulped and looked up. "But it's just so… tall."

Donna let out an exasperated laugh and threw her hands in the air. "By Hera, Kara, you can _fly_!"

Peter and Zatanna struggled to contain their laughter as they all stood in line to board the ferris wheel. The four of them had found themselves with an abundance of free time, and, rather than let Peter stew in the research he was doing on anything related to the DEO, they were spending some quality time at the National City Pier, enjoying the fair before night fell and they went back to work protecting the city.

"But I'm not trapped in a metal box when I am," Kara retorted.

"Don't worry, Kara," Peter reassured her, stepping between her and Donna. "We'll all be there right next to you."

"If you like, I can even hold your hand," Zatanna suggested with a flirty wink.

"Really?" Kara asked, her grin shining like the midday sun over their heads as she reached down and laced her fingers between Zatanna's. "Thanks, Zee!"

Zatanna chuckled and shook her head as Kara began talking at a mile a minute. Peter watched them with a fond smile, until he felt a something run into his legs and heard a slight grunt as a small hand slipped into his pocket and grabbed his wallet. Turning around, he looked down to see a boy, no older than fourteen discretely slipping Peter's wallet into his own pocket as he looked up at Peter with an expression of faux innocence.

"Sorry, Sir," the boy mumbled. Peter gave him a once over and everything from his dark, messy hair, to the tattered red hoodie and jeans he wore, to the cold look in his brown eyes he was trying to hide told him that this kid had not lived an easy life by any means.

"Don't worry about it," Peter replied, waving the pickpocket off. The boy seized the opportunity and bolted to his feet before trying to disappear into the crowd. He watched him for a few more seconds as Donna joined him.

"Who was that?"

"Thief," he explained nonchalantly. "He took my wallet."

Donna raised an eyebrow and looked at him skeptically. "And you just let him run off?"

"I said he took my wallet," Peter repeated, reaching into his pocket and taking out one of the bills Greg had extracted along with his forged ID before the boy had taken them. "I didn't say he took anything else."

Donna frowned and stared in the direction the boy had run with narrowed eyes. "Something feels… off," she mumbled.

"Off how?" Peter asked as they took another step forward in the line.

"I'm not sure. That boy felt… familiar, for some reason."

"What are you talking about?" Kara asked. It was there turn to board the ferris wheel, and Peter waited until they were safely inside the cabin with the heavy, metal door closed and beginning their ascent to explain.

"Now that you mention it," Zatanna remarked, closing her eyes. "There is a faint magical signature in the area. I can't pinpoint where exactly it's coming from, but it is kinda similar to Donna's. Not much, but enough to make a connection between the two."

"How can that be?" Kara asked. "Wasn't Peter the first male to even get close to Themyscira in, like, forever? Why would some kid wandering the streets robbing people be in any way similar?"

"I'm not sure," Donna replied, her lips pursed in thought. "I suppose Diana or my mother might know, but…"

"It's fine," Peter said when she trailed off, looping an arm around her shoulders. "I have a feeling we'll run into him again eventually. In the meantime, let's just enjoy our time here, and save our worries about that for another time."

As if in response to his desire for relaxation, a thundering boom made his chest vibrate as the ferris wheel ground to a halt.

"I had to open my mouth," he grumbled, cursing his Parker luck as he stood up and joined the girls at the window to try and figure out what was going on.

He watched for a moment as a section of the pier shuddered before collapsing into the ocean while people tried desperately to escape. The water was a sickeningly familiar shade of pink, and people tried in vain to swim to shore before something pulled them under. Whatever it was swimming under the water slammed into another of the supports, making the pier shudder above it.

Without much thought, Peter had already opened the cabin door and was diving towards the crumbling pier as his dark t-shirt morphed into the black and green jacket with the spider emblem on the back, and his mask formed over his face. He dove under the pier and swung around, firing webs at the crumbling sections to reinforce them and catching any people he saw falling as well. He had just snatched an older man out of the air when his spider-sense went off and he rolled to the side, avoiding a massive grey shape that had just burst out of the water and nearly slammed into him.

Setting the man down, Spider-Man looked around for his attacker and dodged in time to avoid an ambush from behind him. He watched as the thing that was attacking him dove back into the water, swimming in circles before leaping up at him once more only to be tackled out of the air by Kara, who had flown home with Donna to quickly change before returning while Zatanna helped with the evacuation. Kara threw the massive grey thing onto the pier and Peter joined her and Donna as he got his first good look at it.

The creature before them was vaguely humanoid in shape, standing on two thick legs, with broad shoulders and arms nearly as thick around as Peter's waist. Any similarities to a human stopped there, however, as it had dark grey skin that looked like sandpaper covering its entire body and its hands, feet, and the end of its thick tail were all finned along with a pair of dorsal fins coming out of its back at the base of its spine and between its shoulder blades. The most disturbing part of its appearance was its face; beady black eyes stared at them from behind a short, blunt snout as the creature roared and revealed three rows of massive serrated teeth, complete with what was most likely little pieces of flesh caught between them.

"I think we're gonna need a bigger boat," Peter observed.

"You…" the monster snarled, its voice a guttural warble. "Look tasty."

"You sure about that?" Donna called out. "I'm pretty sure he'd be quite stringy."

"I think I'm insulted?" Peter asked as the monster roared and charged at them. He leapt over it with ease, but the girls decided instead to meet the charging shark-man head on, with Kara jumping up to punch him in the face while Donna went low and attempted to sweep his legs. The monster roared and slashed Donna's side even as it was sent flying into a nearby carnival booth, generating applause from the bystanders who had somehow decided that it was a better idea to stand around and watch the action than flee to safety. The folly of their actions was soon proven to them when the shark-man stood up, looking no worse for wear despite having taken hits from both a kryptonian and an amazon, and roared at the crowd charging at them with its jaw snapping and claws swiping.

"Hey, Sharkboy!" Peter yelled as he leapt after the creature, shooting webs at its legs and making it fall to the ground. "Maybe you should try salad?"

The creature snarled and slashed through Peter's web, jumping up at him as he dove over it, using a quick web shot to its chin to snap its mouth shut and send it slamming back into the ground. Donna rushed in and slammed the monster with her shields, only for its tail to whip up as it rolled across the ground and smack Kara out of the air as she attempted to dive into it, sending her flying off the pier and into the street where she carved a trench in the nearby parking lot.

"You're no match for Nanue, King of Sharks," the beast roared as it easily got to its feet and slashed at Donna. Acting fast, Peter shot a web at her and yanked her back, propelling himself into Nanue and kicking him in the chest. He backflipped off Nanue for added force and Kara dove underneath him, tackling the monster with an angry yell. Nanue's feet tore up the wooden planks along the pier and his mouth stretched into what Peter assumed was a smile as he raised both his fists and slammed them into her back, sending bits of wood flying everywhere as they slammed through the pier to the beach below.

The pier shuddered as Nanue and Kara fought under their feet, each blow sending a small boom echoing through the air. The sound of groaning wood made Peter's eyes widen and he turned to Donna only to groan as he watched her dive off the side of the pier to join Kara in fighting the beast. Screams filled the air as the fight down below knocked out more and more of the support pillars and the pier began to collapse once more. Springing into action, Peter shot webs at the nearest crumbling section of planks and groaned as he planted his feet and heaved, keeping it stable long enough allow the people on top to run away before moving on to the next, following the carnage of the fight below and keeping people from being caught in the crossfire with what looked like some subtle magical help from wherever Zatanna was.

Eventually, the sound of wood being shattered followed by a massive explosion of sand further down the coast caught Spider-Man's attention as the ferris wheel looming over the street creaked and groaned before slowly tilting towards the ocean. People screamed from inside the cabins as they swung wildly through the air. Thinking fast, Peter jumped into the air with enough force to leave a small crater of his own and rocketed toward the top of the ferris wheel. Firing as many webs as he could at the top half of the wheel, he landed on a cross bar near the top only to immediately spring back to the ground, where he gathered all the webbing in his hands and pulled as hard as he could. Shouting from exertion, he turned around with the webbing going over his shoulder and took a single unsteady step forward towards the street.

Even with Greg's amplification of his powers, the ferris wheel and gravity were both fighting him every second, making his muscles scream in protest as he took one more step forward. Then another. And yet another. Slowly, he managed to pull the ferris wheel back until it was standing upright, the wide arc of his webbing ensuring it didn't roll as he took several more steps forward followed by one final yank to make the massive iron wheel start leaning towards him. Holding the webs he had already made in one hand, he leapt into the air and started firing even more with his free hand at the buildings across the street. Linking the two, he swung his way back on top of the ferris wheel as its descent began to slow and fired even _more_ webbing at the buildings, creating a veritable blanket of dark green webbing over the street as the wheel came to an eventual halt mere feet from where it would have crashed into the sides of the buildings.

Sighing in relief, Peter's shoulders slumped before swinging around the cabins and helping the trapped civilians down to the ground. Once he was sure they were all safe, he surveyed the immediate area around the coast for any other stragglers before stumbling slightly from exhaustion, grateful for whoever it was had caught him. Meanwhile, the fight continued on up and down the street, with Nanue easily handling both Donna and Kara, as neither side seemed capable of inflicting much lasting damage on the other. Odds were that they would have continued trying to pummel each other until they collapsed from exhaustion, but the sounds of sirens and distant helicopters prompted Nanue to swat the girls away one last time before diving into the water and swimming away.

"That thing is gone," the person holding him up said.

"The others?" He croaked. He had done more with less energy, but that usually involved fighting, not lifting several tons of steel and wood. His muscles groaned and his bones were creaking.

"A little roughed up, but otherwise fine."

"Good," he mumbled, his vision darkening. "Then I won't feel too bad when I chew them out. But first, I think I need a nap."

 **A/N: Sorry this one took me so long, as well as for the sort-of-cliffhanger. I had a nasty case of writer's block, and needed to just power through and get something posted. Hopefully you guys liked my first super villain fight. King Shark seemed like a good one to really help Kara and Donna develop as heroes, as he can take them on in a fight, as well as not having motives that are usually more complex than hunger. That being said, the girls aren't gonna be feeling too great about themselves for a while as there are some hard lessons that Peter's gonna need to teach them. Anyway, let me know what you think, and I'll try to get the next one up in a quicker fashion.**


	13. Chapter 13

Donna cursed as Nanaue swam away. This was their first time dealing with an enemy more powerful than common crooks, and to say that her pride was a little bruised was an understatement. Even after fighting for so long that the sun was visibly lower and farther west than when they had started, it had taken the combined power of her and Kara to even come close to matching the monstrous shark-man in combat. Even then, Nanaue easily had the strength and speed to injure both of them, despite their superhuman durabilities. His claws had left more than one mark on Donna's body, and Kara was nursing a fractured wrist from where he had grabbed her before hurling the young kryptonian further down the beach.

The sound of helicopters pulled her from her thoughts as five dark aircraft hovered about fifty feet over the beach, surrounding them. Dark cords slithered down from the choppers heralding a platoon of fifteen soldiers in heavy combat gear with guns trained on the two of them.

One of the soldiers stepped forward and took off her helmet, revealing Agent Danvers' scowling face. Donna returned the expression, but reached down to squeeze Kara's arm supportively as she felt her start quaking with restrained emotion right next to her.

"Before you get any ideas of resisting," Danvers barked. "These rifles are all loaded with Kryptonite ammunition. Now stand down, and come with us."

"Not happening," Donna snarled, as Kara turned to stand back-to-back with her. She stared Danvers in the eye as she hefted her shields, grateful that not even Nanaue had managed to do more than superficial damage to the amazonium bucklers. She wondered if Kara could fly them out of there, but that would just leave her vulnerable, and it only took one hit from those bullets to put her out of commission. Luckily, though, Kara's shields were bigger and heavier than her own, so they covered more of her body than Donna's smaller bucklers did.

Donna tensed in anticipation for a fight as the DEO agents closed in around her and Kara, when a shadow passed over her head followed by the familiar _thwip_ of webbing. She watched for a moment as Peter grabbed three of the soldiers' guns with his webbing, yanking them out of their hands and hurling them into the heads of another three on the opposite side of the circle before landing in a crouch right in front of Agent Danvers, grabbing her by the and throwing her off her feet. Springing back into the air, he quickly shot webbing into the faces of the remaining armed soldiers, causing them to real back and allowing Donna and Kara to take the opportunity to charge in and help out themselves.

Between the three of them, they made quick work of the remaining DEO agents. Peter grabbed their guns and quickly unloaded them all, emptying the kryptonite bullets into his hand, where they seemed to melt into his suit before he snapped the guns in half. Once the agents were properly disarmed, he turned to face them, and Donna didn't have to see beneath his mask to tell he was angry.

"Are you two okay?" He asked quietly.

"We are," Donna muttered quietly while Kara nodded mutely.

"Good, then you can both go and help clean up your mess."

"What?" Kara asked incredulously.

"You heard me," Spider-Man replied. "The pier is a wreck, go and help clean it up." Without waiting for them to reply, he leapt into the air and swung away, leaving Kara and Donna to watch him in confusion. The two of them returned to the pier and were astounded by the chaos that greeted them. It seemed that very little had avoided being caught in their fight with Nanaue, and it was only the thanks to a truly astounding amount of dark webbing that National City's coast line wasn't a pile of rubble. Donna's shock grew when her attention was drawn to the massive ferris wheel leaning suspended over the street by a quilt of webs that spanned nearly an entire block.

"Our mess?" She asked rhetorically, annoyance darkening her tone. "We're not the ones who covered nearly the entire coastline in webbing."

"He doesn't seriously think he can just order us around like that, does he?" Kara asked. "He sounds almost like my cousin."

Donna agreed but was interrupted when the sound of cheering alerted them to the massive crowd gathered on the edge of the battlefield. People clapped and whooped as they greeted them, and Donna felt more than a little pride fill her chest as she and Kara approached the fallen ferris wheel.

Detective Sawyer intercepted them, however, and it was clear that she, at least, was not pleased by their actions.

"I hope you enjoy your little time in the spotlight," she snarled. "Because, if it were up to me, I'd have you both put in the deepest darkest hole I could find and throw away the key." Without another word, she spun around and marched back towards the various other emergency workers gathered around and got back into her car before speeding off. Donna looked at Kara who simply shrugged in confusion. In fact, the more Donna looked through the crowd, the more people she could see scowling and yelling jeers at them that were lost within the noise of the others' cheering. Deciding to think about that later, the two of them figured they could at least help with the ferris wheel before Peter's webs dissolved, and Kara flew them both to the top of the buildings. Donna then bundled as much of the webbing in her hands as she could, and had Kara slice them off the buildings with a careful application of her heat-vision. Once that was done, she flew underneath the ferris wheel and started pushing it back while Donna jumped down to the ground on the other side of it and started pulling, grunting at the astounding weight of the metal construct. Even with Kara's help, she had never actually lifted something this heavy, and it was with a shout of relief that she released the webs once the wheel was once more standing upright and Kara had welded the supports back together. Their work done, the two of them returned home where Zatanna was waiting on the couch of their recently expanded lounge area, watching the news coverage. As soon as she saw them entering through the window, she sprung to her feet and dashed over to wrap her arms around the both of them.

"I was so worried," she breathed pulling back to look the two of them over. "Are you two okay?"

"A little banged up," Kara admitted, holding up her swollen wrist, which was already looking better than when she had broken it earlier that day while Zatanna nearly yanked Donna's jacket off in order to get a proper look at the assortment of cuts and bruises. Holding her hands forward, Zatanna closed her eyes and Donna felt a surge of magic surrounding them.

"Laeh Annod dna Arak fo rieht seirujni," she muttered carefully, word by word. Donna watched as both her and Kara's injuries disappeared in a matter of moments and frowned as she suddenly felt a wave of tiredness wash over her.

"Sorry, the spell can only do so much. It also draws on your own energy to help heal your wounds."

"Don't worry about it," Kara replied, looking around the apartment, she frowned. "Have you seen Peter?"

"He was here for a few minutes," Zatanna replied. "He didn't say much other than letting me know that he would be staying out for the night before leaping back out the window. He didn't seem to be in that great a mood."

"He's probably still annoyed we didn't stop Nanaue before he got away," Donna said, her earlier annoyance returning as the three of them sat together on the couch.

"I dunno," Kara replied softly. "That doesn't really sound like him."

"Are you sure?" Zatanna asked. "You've known him the longest; but that's still only been, what, three months?"

Donna opened her mouth to reply, but was interrupted when Kara leapt to her feet and sped to the door, opening it moments after the first knock. Standing there in the hallway between their modified apartment and the workshop and training room were her sister and Kara's cousin, both dressed like regular civilians.

"Kal!" Kara exclaimed. "What are you doing here?"

"May we come in?" Kal asked.

Kara nodded, a slight hue of embarrassment reddening her cheeks, and stepped aside allowing two of the most powerful and famous heroes in the world to step into their apartment. For several moments, the five of them stood frozen, not saying a word, until finally Zatanna mercifully broke the tension.

"I'm gonna… go," she said awkwardly. "Clearly there are some things that need saying here, so… if anyone needs me, I'll be in my room." Carefully, as if afraid of making even the slightest sound as she walked between four beings that could probably hurl her into the moon if they felt like it, she retreated into her room and softly closed her door.

"Donna," Diana greeted, smiling softly. "It's good to see you."

"Sister," Donna replied, remaining on guard as she remembered the last time her older sister was inside her home.

"Donna," Diana began, taking a deep breath and steeling herself, "I came to say… I'm sorry."

"We both are," Kal added. "We didn't think you two were ready to be heroes, and were worried that you would get hurt."

"But then we saw the footage of you two fighting that shark creature," Diana continued. "The way you two worked together and held him back was amazing."

"But he got away," Donna countered, her confusion evident.

"Maybe," Kal agreed. "But you kept him from hurting anyone and forced him to flee. He'll think twice before coming back."

"Kal," Kara murmured. "Thank you. I know was hesitant to follow in your footsteps at first, but now, after finding out how good it feels to use my powers to help others, it really means a lot to have your approval."

"Donna," Diana said taking a cautious step forward. "I wanted you to know… Mother saw what happened as well. She wanted me to say that she couldn't be more proud of you, and that there will always be a place on Themyscira for you, should you choose to return. I, too, am so proud of you. The both of you proved yourselves as true warriors today."

Donna smiled and stepped forward to accept her sister's embrace. Diana and Kal remained for another few minutes, chatting happily with them, before they had to return to their respective duties, leaving both Kara and Donna feeling much better than they had before. Peter may be angry about them not catching Nanaue, but at least there was someone who respected what they did.

The two of them were still fatigued from their fight and Zatanna's spell, so they opted to stay in for the night, and were joined by Zatanna as they turned the couch into a bed before watching various movies she recommended from her childhood while devouring two pizzas each. Eventually, the exhaustion of the day caught up to them, and Zatanna found herself pinned between two sleeping superheroes as their fifth Disney movie of the night played in the background. Smiling, she dropped a kiss on both of their heads and leaned back with her eyes closed while the sound of Aladdin serenading Jasmine lulled her to join them in repose.

*(OoO)*

Peter spent the night stopping any crimes he came across while perusing the hazardous waste bins outside the Science Building at National City University as well as outside Lord Technologies scavenging the necessary chemicals to start synthesizing his web fluid. If the encounter with Nanaue proved anything, it was that even Greg had a limit to how much webbing he could create, and that Donna and Kara had no other means of incapacitating a threat than punching it until it stopped punching back. He felt guilty for having snapped at them the way he had, and resolved to apologize to them when he eventually got back. It wasn't their fault that they were inexperienced when dealing with supervillains, and he shouldn't have blamed them for it either.

However, that didn't stop him from being frustrated with the fact that Nanaue got away after causing so much damage, and he wanted to have a cool head before returning home and speaking with them. Landing on top of the National City homeless shelter, he hid his bag of goodies, quickly changed, and walked were rows of beds lined up along the floor of a massive gymnasium, almost all of them occupied by dreary individuals staring into space with hopeless expressions. A handful of volunteers ran to and fro trying to keep everyone happy and comfortable, but it was clear that they were struggling just to keep their heads above water.

His attention was caught by the sound of shouting at the far end of the gymnasium as two men only a few years older than him shouted at one another. Screams erupted as the two came to blows, and Peter was moving before he knew what was happening. Within moments, Spider-Man had stepped between the two of them and were holding them apart with ease.

"Gentlemen, hasn't anyone ever told you it's rude to cause a scene like that under someone else's roof?"

"You're gonna regret stealing from me, _cabron!_ " One of the men shouted as he reached into his hoodie to pull out a gun. His hand hadn't even fully cleared his pocket before Peter had dropped the other man and grabbed him by the wrist, forcing him to drop the weapon as he squeezed hard enough to make the man's bones start crackling. He then webbed the gun to the floor so no one else could pick it up, and turned to the crowd that had gathered around him.

"Is there someone in charge around here?"

"That would be me," a woman grunted, stepping through the crowd and scowling at him. She looked to be in her mid-fifties, with salt-and-pepper hair tied up into a bun on top of her head while a few stray locks hung down to her chin. Her dark skin showed signs of stress and working long hours in the sun in the past. "You mind telling me what you're doing here?"

"Would you believe me if I said I was coming here hoping there was a volunteer position available?" Peter asked, mentally sighing as he imagined the field day Cat Grant was going to have once she caught wind of this.

"People come here to _escape_ the violence in the streets, kid," the woman growled. "I'm not gonna have you endangering them here too."

"That's fair," Peter replied, lowering the man he was holding as the woman stomped up to them.

"Miss Paula," the man stuttered. "Y-you don't understand…"

"What I understand is that you brought a gun into _my_ shelter, and were gonna use it," Paula snarled. "Now you get out, before I have bug-boy over here throw you out!"

Peter could have sworn he heard the man whimper before nearly sprinting out the doors and into the street. Paula watched him go before turning with a harumph and glaring at the man who was still cowering on the ground.

"I-I-I-I'm sorry," the man whimpered, tears building in the corner of his eyes. "M-m-my boy, he's hungry. I-I-I figured I could bring him something extra from here."

"I've little patience for thieves," Paula said quietly. The man nodded vigorously and her face softened slightly. "Next time, just ask." Standing up, she ignored the rest of the crowd as she grabbed Peter by the collar of his jacket and yanked him towards a set of double doors nearby. He allowed himself to be dragged out of the gymnasium and down a hall to what he assumed was an office, where she released him before taking a seat behind a small desk.

"I know it probably doesn't mean much," Peter offered. "But I am sorry for causing a disturbance here. When I came to see if I could help out, it was supposed to be the guy beneath the mask, not Spider-Man."

"Let me get this straight," Paula replied. "You spend your nights fighting crime, helping people, and saving lives, and the first thing you want to do once the sun comes up and the streets get quiet is come here?"

"My… my aunt used to say 'if you help someone, you help everyone'," Peter explained. "What my friends and I do at night, it's… reactionary. Short term. We can stop a thousand muggers, but that doesn't stop people being desperate enough to resort to mugging. And while I can fight gangs and supervillains until one of them inevitably gets lucky, I know that I can do more by helping the people they prey upon."

Paula stared at him in silence for a long while, searching him for something that only she could see, and making him fidget uncomfortably. Eventually, she sighed and closed her eyes as she shook her head.

"Your heart's in the right place, kid. And if you hadn't put on that suit of yours, I would have gladly welcomed the extra pair of hands."

"No, I get it," Peter replied, not hiding the disappointment in his tone. "I'm a liability to have around."

"While that is something to consider, it wasn't what I was getting at," Paula continued. "You and your friends do more lasting good than you think. But I'm not going to be responsible for you burning yourself out by working here all day after spending all night keeping the streets safe. On top of that, I personally think it would be a poor use of the skills and powers you seem to have if you were here making sandwiches and pouring coffee. That being said, seeing as you've already been seen here, if you or your friends could show up every once in a while, interact with the people out there, I think you'd do more good than in my kitchens."

"You think?" Peter asked.

"You and those girls have given people hope. You're not like those Justice League characters, who all seem larger than life. They feel like you're one of them, and so long as you aren't causing any damage or hurting people, I'd be more than happy to have you go around cheering people up every once in a while." Paula smirked. "Plus, once word gets out that my shelter is under your personal protection, those asshats who keep charging protection fees might just leave me alone."

"Protection fees?" Peter inquired.

"We're sitting smack-dab in the middle of someone's turf," Paula explained, rolling her eyes. "I dunno how, but the gangs all manage to keep their names and those of their bosses a secret. Must make for a hell of a time figuring out who to shoot at every night, but I'm guessing there's a system."

"I'm familiar with that particular strategy," Peter replied, his thoughts casting back to his many confrontations with the Kingpin. "In any case, I think we have a deal." He and Paula stood and shook hands before returning to the gymnasium, where he met several of the people he, Kara, and Donna had saved since arriving in National City. Gradually, the heavy atmosphere of hopelessness lifted and the entire shelter was filled with the sounds of people talking merrily as they went about their business. Eventually, Peter found himself dragged in front of an old CRT by several children as the news played footage of the fight with Nanaue from the previous day.

" _I'm not saying that Shield-Maiden and Valkyrie are inherently bad,"_ one of the newscasters argued, his bright blue suit and bleach blonde hair almost glowing under the heavy lights of the set. " _Whatever that monster was, it was clear that it was only motivated to hurt and kill as many people as it could. But not only did they let it get away, their fight with the creature caused tens of thousands of dollars in damage as well as endangering the lives of everyone that was in the area."_

" _A giant shark-man attacks the pier and starts_ eating _people, and you're blaming the two people who managed to hold them off?"_ Another woman countered. " _No one even got hurt in the fallout from their fight, which is something that has almost never happened since superpowered nutjobs started appearing only to be stopped by Superman and the other members of the Justice League."_

" _I didn't say that,"_ the man rebutted. " _What I'm trying to say is: if these people take it upon themselves to defend the public, then they have to be held accountable. The ends can't justify the means. We've been wondering why, up until now, almost all footage of National City's new heroes has depicted Spider-Man as the only one engaging in any sort of violence, and now I think we know. Because when those women join the fray, they cause almost as much damage as the ones they're fighting."_

" _What about Spider-Man!"_ The woman exclaimed. " _He has shown time and time again to be of a calibre approaching many members of the League, so why did he leave that monster to his partners, when he probably could have helped them take it down with ease?"_

" _Because he was too busy saving lives!"_ The man replied. " _Yes, that monster was a threat. Yes, it needed to be stopped. But Shield-Maiden and Valkyrie should have at least had some sort of situational awareness and realized that they were endangering people by fighting it right there in the middle of a crowded area. Instead their little brawl nearly obliterated the entire area and forced Spider-Man, the one with whom they claim to be equals, to go around saving everyone caught in the crossfire. Every hero has memorable footage from when they publicly tussled with their first superpowered foe, but when people look back on these three, they won't remember Shield-Maiden and Valkyrie brawling with some sort of monster up and down the beaches of National City, they'll remember this."_

The screen cut away from the anchors to show shaky footage of the ferris wheel breaking away from its supports and starting to tilt towards the ocean while people screamed in fear before a dark blur rocketed towards the top and released a massive tide of webbing before jumping back to the ground. Peter watched himself secure the ferris wheel to the buildings across the street, and frowned when it switched to footage of Kara and Donna struggling to keep the monster at bay.

"Is Valkyrie okay?" A little girl asked as they watched Kara get thrown several hundred feet down the beach.

"She was just a little tired," Peter replied softly, rising to his feet and crouching to face the girl. "In fact, I should probably go and make sure she doesn't spend all day in bed. She's really grouchy in the mornings."

The children all laughed, and Peter's grin returned as several people waved goodbye and shouted thanks to him as he left. Taking a deep breath, he leapt back onto the roof of the shelter and grabbed his bag of goodies before swinging back home.

 _On the bright side,_ he thought to himself as he considered how Kara and Donna would react to the media's reaction to them, _I already sleep on the couch, so it's not like they can punish me with that too._

 **A/N: Before anyone gets too annoyed with Peter headed back to apologize, let me make it clear that he's planning on apologizing for snapping at them like he did, not for thinking that they messed up. He was annoyed at the time and didn't consider that they have next to no experience compared to him, and no real tools besides their fists and their shields to deal with superpowered enemies. I like the idea of Spider-Man and the others being more down-to-earth than the leaguers, and spending time with the public, as opposed to just showing up to save the day and leaving. Anyway, hope you liked it, and I'll see you all next time!**


End file.
